B    3    flb3    IflQ 


TY  AND  THE 
LABOR  MOVEMENT 


WILLIAM  M.  BALCH 


lllll      I! 


itiil!:^'!'ii 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE 
LABOR  MOVEMENT 


BY 


WILLIAM  IIONUOE  BALCH 

Formerly  Secretary  of  the  Methodist  Federation 
for  Social  Service 


BOSTON 

SHERMAN,  FRENCH  ^  COMPANY 

1912 


^■*" 


^ 


^"^^-^ 


Copyright,  1912 
Sherman,  French  &'  Company 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OF 

THE  REVEREND  MANNING  BROWN  BALCH 

MY  FATHER 


or\Orf">H^»  fc 


FOREWORD 

The  labor  problem  may  be  considered  with 
regard  to  conditions  or  theories  or  duties.  The 
i^elation  of  Christianity  to  the  labor  mnvpnippF 
is  essentially  ethical  and  is  here  discussedxhieflv 
in~tnat  aspe^cj^  Hence  conditions  and  theories 
affecting  the  labor  problem  are  not  treated  ex- 
haustively, but  only  in  those  essentials  in  which 
the  conditions  create  and  the  theories  may  ex- 
plain the  duties  in  view.  To  enforce  the  ur- 
gent social  mission  of  the  Church,  to  indicate 
the  critical  duties  thrust  upon  us  by  the  labor 
problem,  to  mark  some  paths  toward  timely  so- 
cial service,  are  the  purposes  of  the  present 
study  of  Christianity  and  the  Labor  Movement. 

Considerable  portions  of  this  volume  formerly 
appeared  in  a  series  of  articles  contributed  to 
"Methodist  INIen"  by  the  present  writer  and  are 
published  in  the  following  chapters  by  courtesy 
of  the  editor  of  that  periodical. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I     Perspective  axd  Proportions  .      .      1 
II     The  Estrangement  of  the  Church 

AND  THE  Wage-Earners  ...      9 

III  Labor's    Complaint    Against    the 

Church  18 

IV  Labor's    Complaint    Against    the 

Social  Order. 28 

V     The  Cheapness  of  Human  Life     42 
VI     What  Church-Men  Should  Know 

about  Labor  Unions  .      .      .      .53 
VI     What       Wage-Earners       Should 

Know  about  the  Church    .      .    70 
VIII     The  Social  Creed  of  the  Church  80 

IX     Socialism 91 

X     What  Christian  ^Men  Should  Do  100 


PERSPECTIVE  AND  PROPORTIONS 

Organized  religion  and  organized  labor  are 
chief  dynamic  factors  in  the  progress  of  modern 
society.  Organized  capital  is  also  a  great  so- 
cial factor  but  is  conservative  rather  than  pro- 
gressive. No  menace  to  the  future  can  be  so 
serious  as  a  lasting  estrangement  between  the 
labor  movement  and  Christianity.  No  emer- 
gency could  be  more  critical  than  tlie  present 
and  pressing  necessity  of  a  better  understand- 
ing and  a  more  cordial  cooperation  between  the 
Church  and  the  labor  unions. 

It  is  primarily  important  for  the  modem 
Christian  man  to  see  the  labor  movement  in  its 
true  proportions  and  perspective.  Those  who 
think  of  it  as  a  "modern  inconvenience,"  or  a 
sort  of  cutaneous  eruption  on  the  surface  of  the 
social  body,  have  all  but  missed  the  meaning  of 
past  history  and  present  times.  What,  then, 
is  the  labor  movement? 

Richard  T.  Ely  says,  "The  labor  movement, 
then,  in  its  broadest  terms,  is  the  effort  of  men 
to  live  the  lives  of  men.  .  .  .  The  end  and 
purpose  of  it  all   is   a   riclicr  existence  for  tlie 


2' '  'FT^R'SPECTiVE-'AND  PROPORTIONS 

toilers,  and  that  with  respect  to  mind,  soul,  and 
body."  ' 

Dean  Hodges  says,  "It  is  a  product  partly 
of  the  discontent  which  is  at  the  heart  of  prog- 
ress, and  partly  of  the  fraternal  spirit  which  is 
of  the  essence  of  the  Christian  religion."  ^ 

Charles  P.  Neill,  United  States  Commissioner 
of  Labor,  says  that  the  labor  movement  is  "the 
systematic  organization  of  crafts  or  of  indus- 
tries to  secure  control  of  the  amount  of  wages 
they  will  receive,  the  hours  they  will  work,  and 
the  conditions  under  which  they  will  perform 
their  labor."  ^ 

The  foregoing  definitions  may  be  summarized 
by  saying  that  the  labor  movement  is  the  in- 
dustrial aspect  of  democracy ;  that  is,  indus- 
try of  the  people,  for  the  people,  and  by  the 
people.  And  Christianity  is  the  religious  in- 
terpretation of  democracy ;  that  is,  religion  of 
the  people,  for  the  people,  and  by  the  people. 
Thus  Christianity  and  the  labor  movement  are 
in  vital  affinity,  and  "what  God  hath  joined  to- 
gether, let  no  man  put  asunder." 

What  are  the  facts  that  warrant  so  large  an 
estimate  of  the  labor  movement? 

First,   human   history   itself.      In    the  words 

1  Quoted  in  "The  Social  Application  of  Religion,"  pp. 
64-65. 

2  "Faith  and  Social  Service,"  p.   144-. 

3  See  "The  Social   Application  of  Religion,"  p.  63. 


PERSPECTIVE  AND  PROPORTIONS  3 

of  Commissioner  Neill,  "The  most  of  us  realize 
that  this  hxbor  movement  is  a  world-wide  move- 
ment, but  we  do  not  realize  that  it  is  a  world- 
old  one.  Yet  this  is  the  kc3^note  to  the  whole 
subject,  and  until  we  do  understand  this,  we 
cannot  correctly  g'luge  any  other  aspect  of  it."  ■* 
"The  economic  interpretation  of  history,"  a 
working  principle  of  all  scientific  historians, 
implies  as  one  of  its  essentials,  that  the  facts  of 
history  are  at  no  point  intelligible  save  with 
reference  to  the  struggles  of  the  laboring 
classes  to  raise  their  standards  of  living. 

It  is  a  modem  reading,  but  not  altogether  a 
misreading,  of  the  old  story  of  the  Exodus 
which  characterizes  it  as  a  strike  preceded  by 
a  demand  on  the  part  of  a  walking  delegate  for 
a  living  wage  and  a  recognition  of  the  union. 
It  has  been  discussed  somewhat  in  this  view  by 
at  least  two  accredited  authorities. 

The  history  of  Rome  is  essentially  that  of  the 
economic  struggle  of  the  masses  against  the 
classes  and  the  decline  of  classic  civilization  is 
essentially  a  story  of  the  labor  movement  mov- 
ing the  wrong  way.  ^ 

Through  the  middle  ages  there  were  no  more 
momentous  movements  than  the  abolition  of 
slavery  and  serfdom;  the  peasant  revolts,  such 

4  "The  Social  Application  of  Religion,"  p.  66. 
5Cf.  Mommsen:  "History  of  Rome,"  Vol.  3,  pp.  304- 
305, 


4     PERSPECTIVE  AND  PROPORTIONS 

as  those  of  Tyler  and  Cade  in  England,  of  the 
Jacquerie  in  France,  of  the  Anabaptists  in 
Germany;  and  the  rise  and  power  of  trade- 
guilds  in  the  cities  of  all  Europe.  Upon  these 
facts  and  forces,  all  of  them  obviously  phases 
of  the  continuous  and  underlying  labor  move- 
ment, depended  the  rise  and  fall  of  feudalism, 
and  then  of  absolute  monarchy,  together  with 
the  possibilities  of  the  religious  reformation. 

Since  the  French  Revolution  the  general  es- 
tablishment of  popular  governments  in  the  civi- 
lized world  has  been  based  upon  the  political, 
social,  and  economic  enfranchisement  of  the 
working  classes.  In  Great  Britain,  the  Fac- 
tory Acts  prohibiting  the  exploitation  of  labor ; 
the  repeal  of  the  Conspiracy  Laws  which  had 
hitherto  made  illegal  the  organization  of  labor ; 
the  Compensation  Acts,  relieving  labor  of  the 
fearful  cost  in  life  and  limb  incident  to  modern 
industry ;  the  great  social  equities  of  the 
Lloyd-George  Budget  followed  closely  by  state- 
insurance  of  the  working  classes  against  old 
age,  sickness  and  unemployment,  and  the  estab- 
lishment of  minimum  wage  boards, — these  are 
simply  the  statutory  way-marks  in  the  progress 
of  the  labor  movement.  And  is  it  too  much 
to  say  that  the  anti-slavery  movement  culminat- 
ing in  the  Civil  War  and  the  subsequent  rise  of 
labor-unionism  are  the  most  vital  facts  of 
American  history.'' 


PERSPECTIVE  AND  PROPORTIONS     5 

Commissioner  Neill  again  says  trul}^  "The  ~T 
labor  movement,  is  a  struggle  that  has  gone  on 
since  the  beginning  of  the  political  history  of 
society — a  ceaseless  and  endless  conflict — going 
back  to  the  first  effort  of  the  subjugated  and 
disfranchised  to  overthrow  oppression,  to 
sweep  away  privilege,  and  coming  down  to  the 
present  struggle  to  secure  complete  equality  of 
opportunity  for  all  men  alike  to  work  out  their 
highest  individual  destinies,  and  for  each  to 
live  the  deepest,  the  fullest,  the  richest  life  pos- 
sible, and  to  develop  to  the  fullest  all  the  1 
capacities  with  which  his  Creator  may  have  en- 
dowed him."  ^ 

This  large  conception  of  the  labor  movement 
is  further  warranted  by  the  New  Testament  laws 
of  labor. 

First,  we  have  the  law  of  the  divine  dignity 
of  labor;  "Whatsoever  ye  do,  do  it  heartily  as 
to  the  Lord."  The  conditions  of  toil  must  be 
transformed  from  the  sordid  to  the  sacra- 
mental. Labor's  task  is  to  perfect  God's 
material  creation.  When  God  made  the  world, 
He  saw  indeed  that  it  was  good.  But  it  was 
only  a  good  beginning.  It  was  a  universe  of 
raw  materials,  and  He  left  it  for  the  carpen- 
ters, the  miners,  the  smiths,  the  weavers,  and 
all  hand-workers   of  subsequent  times   to  take 

«  See  "The  Social  Application  of  Religion,"  pp.  68-69. 


6     PERSPECTIVE  AND  PROPORTIONS 

those  raw  materials  and  work  them  over  into 
the  varied  forms  of  beauty  and  usefulness 
which  were  to  enrich  and  comfort  the  life  of 
man.  And  so  it  was  a  fitting  thing  that  God's 
Son,  when  he  came  as  a  Man,  came  also  as  a 
Carpenter. 

Labor's  task  is  also  the  perfecting  of 
humanity.  The  human  race,  like  the  physical 
universe,  is  in  raw  material.  And  in  daily  toil, 
not  only  commodities,  but  character  is  the 
product. 

Again  we  have  the  Christian  law  of  labor's 
liberty.  To  an  oppressed  and  revolutionary 
workingman  the  Christ  declared  that  God  being 
the  Father  of  all,  "then  are  the  children  free." 
And  the  labor  movement,  in  making  for  equal- 
ity of  opportunity,  is  achieving  that  only  sort 
of  liberty  which  is  consistent  with  good  order 
and  economic  progress  and  so  fulfills  the  law  of 
Christ. 

Thirdly,  we  have  the  Christian  law  of  indus- 
trial democracy,  "Ye  know  that  the  rulers  of 
the  Gentiles  lord  it  over  them,  and  their  great 
ones  exercise  authority  over  them.  Not  so 
shall  it  be  among  you,  but  whosoever  would  be 
great  among  you  shall  be  your  minister, 
and  whosoever  would  be  first  among  you 
shall  be  your  servant;  even  as  the  Son 
of  man  came  not  to  be  ministered  unto 
but  to  ministerj   and  to  give  his  life  a  rajj- 


PERSPECTIVE  AND  PROPORTIONS     7 

som  for  many."  On  a  fair  interpretation, 
these  words  seem  to  be  identical  with  labor's 
demand  for  a  share  in  the  control  as  well  as  in 
the  profits  of  industry.  As  Lyman  Abbott 
says,  "Autocracy  in  industry  has  had  a  fair 
trial  with  disastrous  results.  It  has  worked 
no  better  in  industry  than  it  has  in  the  Church 
and  in  the  State."  '^  Of  course  the  time  will 
never  come  when  business  can  be  conducted 
without  leaders,  but  the  leaders  must  not  be 
lords.  In  Christ's  kingdom  there  will  still  be 
chieftains  of  industry,  but  the  chieftain  will 
be  merely  the  chief  servant  and 

"Man  to  man,  the  warld  o'er 
Will  brothers  be  for  a'  that." 

So  the  labor  movement  is  vast,  venerable,  and 
vital, — venerable,  because  of  its  age-long  po- 
tency in  human  history;  vast,  because  of  its 
implications  and  influences  with  regard  to  the 
general  welfare  of  mankind;  vital,  because  its 
moral  ideas  and  results  involve  those  things 
by  which  civilizations  live  and  die  and  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  prevails.  In  these  char- 
acters the  labor  movement  relates  itself,  all  but 
identifies  itself,  with  the  vitality  and  progress 
of  the  kingdom  of  Christ.  In  that  relation  it 
is  to  be  considered  in  these  pages. 

If  it  be  asked,  Why  the  Church  and  Labor 

7  "The  Industrial  Problem,"  p.  129. 


8  PERSPECTIVE  AND  PROPORTIONS 

rather  than  the  Church  and  Capital,  there 
are  two  sufficient  answers.  First,  because  labor 
is  a  function  of  life,  while  capital  is  a  func- 
tion of  things.  "At  the  last  analysis  labor 
means  the  laborer."  ^  Second,  because  labor- 
ers are  the  rule,  and  capitalists  the  exception. 
As  Professor  Ely  says,  "The  labor  movement 
represents  mankind  as  it  is  represented  by  no 
other  manifestation  of  the  life  of  the  nations 
of  the  earth,  because  the  vast  majority  of  the 
race  are  laborers."  ^ 

8  L.  A.  Banks:  "Common  Folks'  Religion,"  p.  59. 

9  "The  Social  Application  of  Religion,"  p.  66. 


II 


THE        ESTRANGEMENT        OF        THE 
CHURCH  AND  THE  WAGE-EARNERS 

The  most  startling  truth  that  can  be  told 
is  lately  being  told  so  often  that  it  is  ceasing 
to  startle  us.  It  is  this :  that  the  modern 
Church  and  the  wage-earning  class  are  mu- 
tually estranged.  Unless  we  move  out  of  our 
fool's  paradise  in  time,  the  present  estrange- 
ment ma}'  at  last  develop  a  life-and-death 
emergency.  For  the  Christian  Church,  if  fi- 
nally alienated  from  the  working-classes,  would 
not  be  Christian.  And  the  labor  movement,  un- 
inspired by  Christian  ideals,  would  be  sordid  in 
motive  and  chaotic  in  result.  And  society  at 
large,  with  its  two  most  potent  forces  thus 
perverted,  would  suffer  disaster  in  its  most 
vital  interests.  Such  calamity  may  seem  far- 
off,  but  the  means  of  averting  it  are  near  at 
hand  to-day,  though  they  may  not  be  to-mor- 
row. It  is  the  purpose  of  the  present  chapter 
to  inquire  as  to  the  extent,  the  nature,  and  the 
causes  of  the  estrangement  in  question. 

1.  As  to  its  extent,  we  must  first  of  all  get 
clear  of  the  notion  that  the  Church   is  suffer- 


10     CHURCH  AND  WAGE-EARNERS 

ing  a  general  decline.  A  recent  and  widely- 
read  book  asserts  the  estrangement  of  the 
working-classes  to  be  so  complete  that 
"church-membership  is  steadily  declining  in 
proportion  to  population."^  Almost  simulta- 
neously with  that  statement  appeared  the  no- 
table Census  Bulletin  which  reported  that  in  six- 
teen years  the  membership  of  the  churches  of 
the  United  States  had  increased  over  60  per 
cent.,  while  population  was  increasing  but  34 
per  cent.  Nor  can  the  former  percentage  be 
explained  away  by  attributing  it  to  immigra- 
tion from  Roman  Catholic  countries.  For  the 
Protestant  church-membership  has  increased 
nearly  44  per  cent.,  which  is  10  per  cent,  faster 
than  population.  The  writer  quoted  makes 
sweeping  denial  of  the  reliability  of  church 
statistics.  In  that  regard  it  should  be  suffi- 
cient to  note  that  such  statistics  usually  afford 
inadequate  rather  than  an  excessive  enumera- 
tion of  actual  adherents ;  witness  the  un- 
counted company  of  "brothers-in-law"  and 
other  supporters  of  the  churches  whose  names 
are  nowhere  enrolled  or  reported. 

Misleading  inferences  are  also  drawn  from 
the  proportion  of  wage-earners  counted  in 
Sunday  congregations.  It  is  thus  overlooked 
that  laborers,  by  the  conditions   of  their  life, 

1  C.  B'.  Thompson:  "The  Churches  and  the  Wage  Earn- 
ers," pp.  viii  and  7. 


CHURCH  AND  WAGE-EARNERS     11 

are  necessarily  irregular  in  church  attendance. 
Even  when  they  so  desire,  they  are  unable  to 
maintain  the  same  frequency  of  attendance  as 
other  social  classes.  With  the  extensive  in- 
dustrial employment  of  women  this  considera- 
tion becomes  an  increasing"  factor.  A  gi'ave 
error  is  also  made  by  those  who  overlook  the 
millions  of  our  working  people  adhering  to  the 
Romanist,  the  Greek  and  the  Hebrew  faiths. 
While  our  present  concern  is  with  Protestant- 
ism, we  must  not  count  these  non-Protestant 
worshipers  among  "the  estranged."  It  is, 
however,  a  matter  of  grave  import  that  several 
million  lapsed  Romanists  are  to  be  found 
among  the  workingmen  of  this  country,  while 
we  have  it  on  good  authority  that  there  is  also 
a  serious  "drift  from  the  synagogue." 

Nor  should  we  forget,  as  is  often  done,  that 
two  of  the  most  numerous  elements  in  the  wage- 
earning  population  are  by  no  means  estranged 
from  the  churches.  First,  there  are  the  so- 
called  "soft-handed"  laborers — clerks,  sales- 
men, book-keepers,  and  many  kinds  of 
"agents."  Secondly,  there  are  the  manual 
laborers  of  all  trades  in  the  smaller  towns  and 
villages.  These  two  classes,  millions  strong,  to- 
gether with  the  professional  classes,  who  in 
their  way  are  also  wage-earners,  probably  con- 
stitute a  majority  of  those  who  work  for  wages 
as  well  as  a  majority  of  adult  church-members. 


12     CHURCH  AND  WAGE-EARNERS 

On  the  other  hand,  these  wage-earners  have 
little  or  no  class-consciousness  or  group  cohe- 
sion ;  they  are  not  unionized,  and  their  social 
and  personal  affinities  are  largely  with  the  other 
social  classes.  In  other  words,  these  who  are 
not  estranged  are  also  not  the  laborers  who 
make  the  labor  movement. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  are  too  complacent  in 
citing  the  farmers  as  a  class  loyal  to  the 
Church.  They  are  indeed  laborers  in  the  sense 
that  they  labor.  But  they  are  not  "wage- 
earners"  ;  they  are  capitalists.  "Farm- 
hands," on  the  contrary,  are  wage-earners, 
and,  we  have  much  reason  to  believe,  are  also 
generally  estranged  from  the  Church.  At  the 
same  time  they  sustain  no  active  or  direct  part 
in  the  labor  movement. 

We  have  still  to  consider  the  manual  laborers 
of  the  cities,  together  with  railway  and  mine 
workers.  These  workingmen  are  class-con- 
scious and  unionized  and  are  the  movers  of  the 
labor  movement.  Are  they  estranged  from  the 
churches?  Here  we  have  come  to  the  vital 
point  in  the  modern  social  problem.  Sadly  be 
it  said  that  the  straws  seem  to  indicate  an 
adverse  wind.  President  Plantz  states  that 
there  were  recently  in  this  country  15,000,000 
men  between  sixteen  and  thirty-five  years  of 
age,  and  that  6,000,000  were  in  touch  with  the 
Church   and   9,000,000   out   of  touch  with   it. 


CHURCH  AND  WAGE-EARNERS     13 

whether  Protestant  or  CathoHc.-  It  has  been 
ascertained  that  in  London  only  about  six  per 
cent,  of  the  people  attend  church,  while  in  the 
suburbs  the  percentage  is  about  twenty-nine. 
A  similar,  though  less  extreme,  condition  ob- 
tains in  American  cities.  Ex-President  Bas- 
com  states  that  in  Pittsburg  and  Allegheny, 
with  a  working  class  population  of  some  300,- 
000  and  a  Protestant  membership  of  4-8,000, 
only  10  per  cent,  of  the  latter  were  working- 
men.^  The  present  writer  has  made  inquiry 
as  to  the  labor-membership  of  his  own  denomi- 
nation in  certain  cities.'*  Replies  from  seven 
city  churches  in  six  states  afford  the  following 
results :  aggregate  membership  of  the  churches 
replying,  3,300;  number  of  members  who  are 
manual  laborers,  570 ;  domestic  employees, 
122;  accountants,  salesmen,  stenographers, 
agents,  clerks  and  teachers,  581 ;  members  of 
labor  unions,  90.  The.«e  figures  should  be  con- 
sidered in  view  of  two  qualifying  facts  ;  first, 
that  most  of  the  churches  reporting  are  so  con- 
,ducted  and  environed  as  to  reach  an  unusual  pro- 
portion of  working  people ;  second,  that  in  sev- 
eral of  these  churches  the  manual  laborers  re- 
ported as  church-members  were,  in  dispropor- 
tionate number,  Avomen  and  minors.     From  the 

2  "The  Church  and  the  Social  Problem,"  p.  197. 

3  "Social  Theory,"  pp.  213-214. 

4  See  "Methodist  Men,"  October,  1910. 


14     CHURCH  AND  WAGE-EARNERS 

reports,  thus  explained,  it  seems  on  the  one 
hand  that  these  figures  do  not  confirm  the  more 
alarming  estimates  sometimes  made  regarding 
the  alienation  of  labor  from  the  church,  nor  on 
the  other  hand,  the  easy  optimism  that  sees  no 
occasion  for  alarm  at  all.  These  figures,  like 
others  that  have  been  compiled  and  analyzed 
with  due  care,  seem  to  indicate  that  our  city 
churches  are  not  proportionately  constituted 
of  manual  laborers  and  still  less  of  trades-un- 
ionists. The  seriousness  of  the  matter  lies  not 
only  in  the  great  numbers  thus  alienated,  but 
in  the  further  facts :  first,  that  the  evil  is  char- 
acteristic of  our  cities,  v/hcre  all  the  social  prob- 
lems have  appeared  in  their  most  difficult 
forms ;  second,  that  the  classes  concerned  are 
practically  inclusive  of  organized  labor. 

2.  In  what  sense  are  the  Church  and  the 
wage-earners  estranged?  A  reliable  answer  is 
indicated  in  President  Plantz's  instructive  cor- 
respondence with  labor  leaders.  Of  ninety- 
three  who  answered  his  inquiries,  six  expressed 
their  attitude  toward  the  Church  as  "cordial," 
eleven  were  "indifferent,"  seventy-three  "dissat- 
isfied," three  "hostile."  Positive  hostility  and 
positive  cordiality  seem  to  be  exceptional,  and 
indifference  or  dissatisfaction  all  but  universal 
among  those  wage-workers  now  under  con- 
sideration.^     The  more  thoughtful  among  them 

5  "The  Church  and  the  Social  Problem,"  p.  81. 


CHURCH  AND  WAGE-EARNERS     15 

often  suspect  that  the  labor  movement  is  not 
understood  by  the  Church,  that  laboring-men 
are  not  heartily  welcomed  to  its  worship  and 
membership,  that  money  or  the  want  of  it  con- 
trols the  Church.  As  to  the  less  thoughtful, 
the  Church  is  often  not  in  their  thoughts  at  all. 

Nor  is  this  all,  or  the  worst.  The  Church,  in  ( 
much  the  same  sense,  is  estranged  from  the 
wage-earners.  While  church-people  are  not, 
of  course,  positively  hostile  to  laboring  people, 
it  is  yet  true  that  indifference  and  impatience 
too  often  mark  the  attitude  of  churchmen  to- 
ward the  labor  movement.  The  Church  thinks 
about  as  much  and  about  as  little  of  the  union 
as  the  union  does  of  the  Church.  Important 
as  it  is  that  workingmen  should  have  a  better 
appreciation  of  the  Church,  it  is  at  least  as 
important  that  churchmen  should  have  a  bet- 
ter appreciation  of  the  labor  movement. 

3.  The  causes  of  this  evil  are  not  far  to 
seek.  It  is  only  blind  uncharity  that  attributes 
it  to  the  "sinfulness  of  laboring  men."  In 
that  case  all  classes  would  be  estranged  from 
the  Church,  "for  all  have  sinned  and  come 
short  of  the  glor}'^  of  God."  The  chief  cause 
of  the  workingman's  indifference  is  probably 
his  complete  preoccupation  with  other  things. 
Exhausting  labor  and  the  menace  of  poverty, 
the  break-up  of  household  regularity,  the  clat- 
ter of  traffic  and  transportation,  the  brilliancy. 


16     CHURCH  AND  WAGE-EARNERS 

variety  and  excitement  of  life  in  the  modern 
city,  are  more  than  enough  to  pre-engage  the 
mind  and  overcharge  the  life  of  the  working- 
man  in  advance  of  the  somewhat  tardy  and  not 
too-pressing  solicitations  of  the  Church.  And 
when  the  indifference  awakens  into  conscious 
dissatisfaction,  it  is  chiefly  by  way  of  reaction 
against  the  seeming  indifference  of  the  Church 
toward  the  labor  movement.  This  reaction 
may  be  greatlj'  in  excess  of  its  occasion,  but 
what  should  concern  Christian  men  is  that  it 
should  have  any  occasion  at  all  Another 
chief  cause  of  the  evil  is  immigration,  bringing 
to  us,  as  it  has,  millions  of  workingmen  who 
lose  their  old-world  ideals  of  religion  without 
acquiring  the  new. 

We  note  with  devout  gratitude  a  tendency 
toward  a  better  understanding  on  both  sides. 
The  Outlook-  recently  said:  "Certainly  a  few 
years  ago  there  was  abundant  reason  for  the 
belief  that  most  wage-earners,  and  particularly 
members  of  trades-unions,  felt  either  unwel- 
come or  unregarded  in  church,  and,  on  the 
whole,  when  not  indifferent,  rather  resentful 
that  the  churches  had  so  little  to  say  about 
their  problems  of  life  and  about  the  relation 
of  religion  to  their  peculiar  struggles.  Within 
a  few  years,  however,  there  has  occurred  a 
marked  change." 

Marking  this  change  are  such  signs  as  the 


CHURCH  AND  WAGE-EARNERS     17 

organic  declarations  of  the  religious  denomina- 
tions concerning  the  labor  problems,  the  ob- 
servance of  Labor  Sunday,  the  opening  of  labor 
gatherings  with  prayer,  the  exchange  of 
fraternal  delegates  between  ministerial  bodies 
and  labor  unions,  the  mutually  gratifying  ut- 
terances of  Church  press  and  labor  press,  and 
the  work  of  the  social  service  organizations  of 
the  several  denominations  and  the  Social  Ser- 
vice Commission  of  the  Federated  Churches. 
Probably  no  man  can  speak  in  this  re- 
gard with  more  authority  than  Charles 
Stelzle,  who  says:  "While  there  is  still 
considerable  alienation  of  the  workingman 
from  the  Church,  there  is  no  other  class  of 
men  among  whom  there  is  this  conspicuous 
movement  toward  the  Church."*' 

And  yet  the  breach  is  not  closed. 

6  "The  Church  and  Labor,"  p.  33. 


Ill 


LABOR'S     COMPLAINT    AGAINST    THE 
CHURCH 

"Let  judgment  begin  at  the  house  of  the 
Lord,"  The  Church  can  save  neither  the  social 
order  nor  itself  unless  it  shall  recognize  its  own 
short-comings.  Of  these  the  most  perilous 
is  its  estrangement  from  the  labor  movement, 
an  estrangement  largely  due  to  mutual  misun- 
derstandings. Hence  it  is  a  primary  necessity 
that  churchnien  should  give  a  full,  patient,  and 
candid  hearing  to  the  complaints  of  laboring 
men  against  the  Church.  In  so  doing,  our 
purpose  must  not  be  to  controvert  our  critics, 
but  to  get  a  sympathetic  understanding  of  their 
views,  to  judge  and  mend  our  own  ways,  and  to 
find  the  common  ground  where  they  and  we  can 
work  together  for  that  grand-total  of  all 
human  interests  which  we  call  the  Kingdom  of 
God. 

A  statement  follows  of  labor's  complaint 
against  the  Church.  It  may  not  be  all  the 
truth  nor  even  all  true,  but  it  is  urged  by  men 
who  speak  in  good  faith,  and  hence  it  should 
help  us  to  know  the  truth. 
J8 


LABOR  AND  THE  CHURCH         19 

\^ 

1.  It  is  charged  that  the  Church  "has  al- 
ways stood  by  tlic  ruling  classes,  because — it 
did  not  dare  to  oppose  the  men  or  the  govern-' 
ment  which  gave  it  support."^  In  Richard 
Heath's  phrase,  it  is  "the  captive  City  of  God," 
and  in  the  younger  Henry  George's,  "the 
Nobles  of  Privilege  are  the  chief  patrons  of  the 
Church  and  have  an  overmastering  influence."" 
In  evidence  of  such  charges  they  cite  the  co- 
incidence of  ecclesiastical  wealth  and  popular 
poverty  during  thc^  middle  ages ;  the  opposi- 
tion of  Luther  to  the  rising  of  the  German 
peasants ;  the  alliance  of  King  and  Church 
against  the  Commons  of  England ;  Adam 
Smith's  arraignment  of  the  Church  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century  for  its  servility  to  wealth,^ 
the  attitude  of  American  churches  toward  the 
anti-slavery  movement;  the  almost  unanimous 
vote  of  the  English  bishops  in  the  House  of 
Lords  against  the  Workingmen's  Compensation 
Act,  the  anti-liquor  bills,  and  the  Lloyd-George 
budget ;  the  familiar  clerical  apologies  for 
Standard  Oil,  and  the  opposition  of  prominent 
laymen  to  child-labor  laws  and  social  legisla- 
tion of  almost  every  sort. 

It   might    seem   easy    to   argue   that   all   this 

iSee  C.  Stelzle:  "The  Church  and  Labor,"  p.  9. 

2  "The  Menace  of  Privilepe,"  p.  321. 

3  See  "The  Wealth  of  Nations,"  Book  V,  Ch.  I,  Part 
III,  Art.  III. 


20         LABOR  AND  THE  CHURCH 

is  only  a  part-truth,  and  even  a  perverted  view 
of  that  part.  But  it  will  be  more  profitable 
for  us  to  reflect  on  the  part  that  is  true  in 
spite  of  partial  or  perverted  views.  There  is 
at  least  occasion  for  complaint  on  the  part  of 
laborers  and  for  concern  on  the  part  of  church- 
men. 

2.  It  is  charged  that  the  Church  is  usually 
neutral  when  not  hostile  toward  labor's  efforts 
to  uplift  humanity.  Josiah  Strong  writes  that 
he  "knows  personally  of  a  committee  of  labor 
men  who  tried  to  secure  the  passage  of  a  law 
limiting  child-labor,  and  in  a  great  city  not  one 
clergyman  could  be  found  to  give  them  more 
than  casual  help ;"  while,  "in  another  city, 
some  years  ago,  not  one  clergyman  could  be 
found  to  aid  the  bakers  agitate  for  a  law  giv- 
ing them  Sunday  rest."  ^  The  Commission  of 
the  Federated  Churches  of  America  found  that 
in  a  recent  and  already  historic  strike  for  a 
weekly  rest  day,  the  local  ministerial  union  had 
administered  a  sharp  rebuke  to  the  strikers  for 
alleged  disorders,  but  no  corresponding  rebuke 
to  the  employers  who,  for  some  years,  had  been 
requiring  an  unnecessary  and  increasing 
amount  of  Sunday  labor.  The  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury  said  that  he  worked  seventeen  hours 
a  day,  and  had  no  time  left  to  solve  the  prob- 

4  "The  Gospel  of  the  Kingdom,"  May,  1910,  p.  62. 


LABOR  AND  THE  CHURCH         21 

1cm  of  the  unemployed:  to  which  Kclr  Hfirdie 
replied:  "A  religion  ^\hich  demands  seventeen 
hours  a  da}^  for  organization  and  leaves  no 
time  for  thought  about  starving  men,  women, 
and  children,  has  no  message  for  this  age."  ^ 
In  other  words,  the  Church  is  too  much  pre- 
occupied with  working  its  own  machinery. 

Of  course  it  can  be  said  again  that  this  is 
only  a  partial  truth.  But  again  it  will  he  bet- 
ter for  us  to  dwell  on  the  partial  truth  than  on 
the  partial  error  of  such  complaints.  Or,  we 
may  point  to  the  organic  declarations  of  the 
several  Protestant  denominations  and  to  those 
of  their  Federal  Council,  by  all  of  which  the 
churches  are  committed  to  the  cause  of  labor 
and  against  all  social  injustice.  To  this  the 
laboring  men  may  reply  that  the  Church,  by 
such  declarations,  has  not  fully  put  itself  in  the 
right,  but  has  rather  acknowledged  a  standard 
of  right  by  which  not  only  the  social  order  but 
the  Church  itself  is  to  be  judged.  And  work- 
ingmen  are  now  asking  with  some  sharpness 
whether  our  deeds  are  fulfilling  the  promise  of 
our  declarations. 

3.  A  working-man  asks :  "Is  it  not  a  fact 
that  in  most  churches  to-day  tlie  groat 
majority  of  so-called  'better  class'  people  look 
down  upon  the  workingman,  who  spends  his  life 

5  See  "Annals  of  the  American  Academy  of  Social 
Science,"  Nov.,  1907,  p.  18. 


22         LABOR  AND  THE  CHURCH 

in  toiling  for  their  necessities  and  luxuries,  and 
do  not  associate  with  hiin  as  a  brother?"*'  A 
distinguished  High  Church  rector  testifies  that 
there  are  churches  in  which  "the  presence  of  the 
poor  is  regarded  as  bad  form.  If  Christ  him- 
self were  to  enter  them,  the  pew-opener  would 
ask.  What  is  that  Carpenter  doing  here?"^ 
A  prominent  English  man  of  letters  writes :  "I 
regard  pews  and  pew-rents  as  distinctly  anti- 
Christian.  They  foster  class-distinctions. 
They  keep  the  poor  at  a  distance.  They  en- 
courage snobbishness,  and  give  point  to  the 
sneer  that  Churches  only  want  those  who  are 
able  to  pay,"  Personally,  one  may  be  sure 
that  much  of  this  appearance  of  exclusiveness 
is  a  misunderstanding  due  to  differences  between 
the  conventional  manners  of  the  rich  and  the 
poor.  Nevertheless,  every  man  who  travels  is 
probably  acquainted,  as  is  the  winter,  with 
churches  where  a  measure  of  snobbery  is  unmis- 
takable. It  were  better  for  the  Church  to  be 
patient  under  a  hundred  false  suspicions  than  to 
countenance  this  abomination  in  a  single  in- 
stance. 

4.  Wage-earners  join  the  outcry  against 
the  discrepancy  between  the  way  we  worship  on 

c  See  George  Haw:  "Christianity  and  the  Working 
Classes,"  p.  4,  cf.  p.   144. 

7  Quoted  by  H,  George,  Jr. ;  "The  Menace  of  Priv- 
ilege," p,  407. 


LABOR  AND  THE  CHURCH         23 

Sunday  and  the  way  we  do  business  on  Mon- 
day. They  declare  that  many  of  tlie  injustices 
which  they  combat  are  practiced  by  men  who 
seem  to  be  acceptable  members  of  the  Churches. 
I  still  believe  that  churchmen  are  responsible 
less  often  than  other  employers  for  such  abuses 
as  child-labor,  unfenced  machinery,  unsanitary 
shops,  and  unjust  blacklisting.  Nevertheless 
the  difference  is  so  inconsiderable  that  work- 
ingmen  seeking  work  do  not  usually  inquire 
which  employers  are  church-members  and  which 
are  not.  And  without  conceding  all  that  is 
said  concerning  such  inconsistencies,  it  is  yet 
undeniable  that  the  moral  teachings  of  the 
Church  have  not  3'ct  proved  effective  to  the 
degree  of  making  social  injustices  equally 
scandalous  with  drunkenness  or  adultery  on  the 
part  of  church-members. 

5.  Wage-earners  charge  the  Church  with 
culpable  ignorance.  The  Hon.  Arthur  Hen- 
derson, M.  P.,  one  of  the  world's  great  labor 
leaders  and  also  a  leader  in  Christian  work, 
writes  thus :  "The  Churches  have  not  ap- 
preciated the  real  meaning  and  the  true  in- 
wardness of  many  of  the  movements  which  the 
workers  themselves  have  initiated  and  developed 
for  their  social  and  industrial  ameliora- 
tion. .  .  .  Possessed  of  only  a  very  super- 
ficial knowledge  of  the  question,  the  Churches, 
for  instance  have  concluded  that  unemployment 


24         LABOR  AND  THE  CHURCH 

was  mainly  due  to  intemperance,  pauperism, 
the  result  of  thriftlessness,  and  like  the  Priest 
and  the  Levite,  they  have  passed  by  on  the 
other  side."  ^  Or  consider  the  exasperating 
untactfulness  of  the  ministers  who  lately  asked 
of  a  body  of  strikers,  "Is  it  reasonable  to  ex- 
pect that,  by  attacking  your  employer  openly 
and  in  secret  and  by  trying  to  destroy  his 
property  and  his  business,  you  can  best  per- 
suade him  to  deal  generously  and  magnani- 
mousl}'  with  you?"  No  one  ought  to  meddle 
with  labor  controversies  until  he  understands 
that  self-respecting  workingmen  regard  as  an 
insult  the  insinuation  that  they  ask  for  "gen- 
erosity" or  "magnanimity"  or  anything  else 
than  simple  justice. 

No  graver  duty  rests  with  Christian  men 
than  to  understand  the  labor  problem.  They 
must  know  it  by  careful  study  of  economic 
authorities  and  by  living  and  fraternal  contact 
with  the  laboring  people.  They  must  know 
what  the  gospel  has  to  say  about  it  and  how 
that  gospel  applies  to  the  crisis  of  to-day. 
Otherwise  the  Church  remains  at  fault. 

6.  We  must  consider  without  pre-judgment 
the  workingman's  complaint  that  we  are  often 
unjust  and  inconsistent  in  our  criticisms  of  the 
labor  movement.     He  sa^^s  that  we  often  con- 

8  See  George  Haw:  "Christianity  and  the  Working 
Classes,"  pp.  120,  134.. 


LABOR  AND  THE  CHURCH         25 

demn  a  great  and  beneficent  social  movement 
because  of  certain  minor  incidents ;  that  we 
are  content  with  hearing  one  side  of  the  con- 
trovers}',  and  that  the  anti-labor  side.  He  adds 
that  the  Church  itself  "need  not  go  very  far 
back  in  its  own  history  to  find  duplicated  nearly 
everything  we  deplore  in  Organized  Labor  to- 
day, even  down  to  boycotting  and  slugging,"  ^ 
witness  certain  memories  of  Smithficld  and  of 
Boston  Common.  Or,  with  modern  reference, 
he  complains  that  we  denounce  the  unions  for 
certain  practices  which  we  follow  in  the 
churches ;  for  instance,  that  "the  ministry  is  a 
closed  shop,  guarding  its  privileges  as  jealously 
as  does  the  average  trade-union." 

7.  Wage-workers  complain  of  the  Church 
"that  it  teaches  the  poor  to  be  submissive  under 
'present  injustice,  since  all  things  will  be  made 
right  in  heaven."  Or,  as  Ruskin  puts  it,  "You 
knock  a  man  into  the  ditch  and  then  tell  him 
to  remain  content  in  the  position  in  Avhich 
Providence  has  placed  him."  Perhaps  it  is 
nearer  the  truth  to  say  that  the  patience  we 
preach  in  these  days  is  an  active  patience, — 
invincible  perseverance,  optimism,  courage  and 
unselfishness,  striving  not  indeed  to  revenge 
wrongs  but  to  rectify  them.  Yet  under  labor's 
error  here,  lies  an  error  of  the  Church.     For 

9C.  Stelzle:  "The  Church  and  Labor,"  pp.  11  and  U. 


26         LABOR  AND  THE  CHURCH 

has  not  the  Church  hitherto,  while  duly  wit- 
nessing for  providence  and  immortality,  some- 
what failed  in  witnessing  for  social  justice? 
And  have  we  duly  developed  the  masculine  and 
militant  type  of  piety? 

8.  "We  labor  men,"  writes  Arthur  Hender- 
son, "are  not  unmindful  of  the  vast  amount  of 
effort  the  Churches  are  making;  visiting  the 
sick,  clothing  the  naked,  feeding  the  hungry, 
comforting  the  sorrowing.  What  we  deplore 
is  the  fact  that  co-incident  with  such  relief 
the  Churches  have  not  attempted  to  get  at  the 
root-cause  of  all  the  evil  and  distress.  If  they 
would  display  the  same  amount  of  energy  in 
seeking  to  eradicate  from  our  collective  life  the 
evil  it  contains,  that  they  have  shown  in  seek- 
ing to  deliver  the  individual  life  from  sin,  there 
would  have  been  less  call  for  their  relief 
work."  ^^  Concerning  this  charge  there  is  one 
comment  to  be  made:  it  is  substantially  true. 

A  final  summary  is  thus  put  into  a  parable 
by  Hugh  Price  Hughes:  Someone  was  com- 
mending a  certain  preacher  in  highest  terms. 
But  a  listener  made  this  unanswerable  an- 
swer: "After  all,  he  doesn't  remind  me  of  Jesus 
Christ."  Zion's  Herald  adds:  "The  minister 
and  the  Church  may  be  doing  very  creditable 
and  useful  work,  but  they  are  not  Christian  in 

10  See  G.  Haw:  Op.  cit.  p.  135. 


I 


LABOR  AND  THE  CHURCH         27 

the  full  and  essential  use  of  the  term  if  the 
laboring  man  is  still  able  to  say,  'They  do  not 
remind  me   of  Jesus   Christ.'  " 


IV 


LABOR'S    COMPLAINT    AGAINST    THE 
SOCIAL  ORDER 

One  of  the  great  religious  denominations  has 
lately  made  the  organic  declaration :  "We 
cordially  declare  our  fraternal  interest  in  the 
aspirations  of  the  laboring  classes,  and  our  de- 
sire to  assist  them  in  the  righting  of  every 
wrong."  Are  there  any  such  wrongs  to  be 
righted?  Labor  answers  with  the  following 
grave  complaints  against  the  social  order, 
namely,  non-employment,  over-employment,  un- 
just distribution,  unfair  discrimination,  and  the 
under-appraisement  of  humanity.  The  first 
four  will  be  considered  in  the  present  and  the 
fifth  in  our  next  chapter. 

1.  NON-EMPLOYMENT 
Truly  said  Carlyle :  "A  man  willing  to  work 
and  unable  to  find  work  is  perhaps  the  saddest 
sight  that  Fortune's  inequality  exhibits  under 
the  sun."  Always  there  are  many  such  men. 
Not  long  ago  there  were  probably  three  million 
in  the  United  States.  Organized  wage-earners 
probably  suffer  the  least  from  this  cause  and 
yet  we  have  it  on  the  authority  of  the  New  York 
28 


LABOR  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER     29 

State  Commission  that  "organized  workers  lose 
on  the  average  twenty  per  cent,  of  their  pos- 
sible income  through  unemployment."  ^ 

It  is  a  two-fold  wrong.  First,  to  the  labor- 
ing man,  because  the  right  to  labor  is  a  neces- 
sary corollary  of  the  right  to  life.  The 
world  owes  no  man  a  living  but  does  owe  every 
man  a  chance  to  make  a  living.  Unemploy- 
ment is  also  a  wrong  to  society.  The  unem- 
ployed often  become  the  unemployable.  The 
idle  are  natural  candidates  for  mendicancy, 
vagrancy  and  crime,  and  are  often  forced  into 
pauperism,  temporary  or  chronic.  The  New 
York  Commission  gives  data  from  the  charit- 
able societies  showing  that  "from  twenty-five  to 
thirty-five  per  cent,  of  those  who  apply  to  them 
for  relief  every  year  have  been  brought  to  their 
destitute  condition  primarily  through  lack  of 
work."  2 

On  these  facts  Louis  D.  Brandeis  makes  the 
following  just  comments:  "Some  irregularity  in 
employment  is  doubtless  inevitable;  but  in  the 
main  irregularity  is  remediable.  It  has  been 
overcome  with  great  profit  to  both  employer 
and  employee  in  important  businesses  which 
have  recognized  the  problem  as  one  seriously 
demanding  solution.  Society  and  industry 
need  only   the  necessary   incentive  to  secure  a 

1  See  "The  Otulook,"  June  10,  1911,  pp.  293-294.. 

2  See  "The  Outlook,"  loc.  cit. 


30     LABOR  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

great  reduction  in  irregularity  of  employment. 
In  the  scientifically  managed  business  irregular- 
ity tends  to  disappear.  So  far  as  it  is  irreme- 
diable it  should  be  compensated  for  like  the  in- 
evitable accident."  ^ 

2.    OVER-EMPLOYMENT 

Not  only  are  many  who  ought  to  work  de- 
prived of  work,  but  many  who  work  are  over- 
worked, and  many  ^^ho  ought  not  to  work  are 
compelled  to  work.  Nor  is  it  relevant  to  say 
that  there  is  no  law  of  nature  prescribing  the 
eight-hour  day.  The  law  of  nature  does  pre- 
scribe that  the  hours  of  work  must  not  pass  the 
"point  at  which  normal  fatigue  becomes 
pathological  fatigue."  For  it  is  known  to 
science  that  over-work  literally  poisons  the 
worker.  And  with  physical  comes  spiritual 
demoralization.  Twelve  hours  a  day  for  seven 
days  in  the  week,  the  actual  labor-time  of  many 
thousands,  means  the  abolition  of  life  save  in 
its  animal  and  mechanical  processes.  The 
workingman  is  often  told  that  he  works  no 
harder  nor  longer  than  his  employer.  But  he 
knows  that  all  factories  are  open  earlier  than 
most  offices,  that  employers  take  summer  vaca- 
tions and  foreign  tours,  while  he  himself  rarely 
travels  except  on  foot  hunting  a  job,  and  that 
even  the  hardest-working  employer  is  working 

3  See  "The  Outlook,"  loc.  cit. 


LABOR  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER     31 

for  himself  and  his  own  ambition,  which  makes 
the  greatest  difference  in  the  world. 

The  supreme  evil  of  over-cmployiiicnt  is  the 
exploitation  of  the  labor  of  women  and  children. 
Concerning  tlie  former,  for  instance,  it  is  a  law 
of  nature  that  women  should  work  fewer  hours 
per  day  and  fewer  days  per  month  than 
men,  and  when  economic  greed  violates  this  law 
the  pcnalt}'  in  disqualified  motherhood  is  the 
costliest  price  that  human  society  can  pay  for 
its  sins.  The  present  coincidence  between  the 
diminished  general  birth-rate  and  the  increased 
birth-rate  of  defectives  and  degenerates  is  the 
most  disheartening  portent  that  now  appears, 
or  could  appear,  at  this  time  of  social  crisis. 
And  these  two  ominous  facts  are  attributable, 
according  to  high  authority,  in  large  measure 
to  the  overstrain  of  modern  industrialism,  par- 
ticularly in  its  exhausting  demands  on  woman- 
hood.^ 

In  the  United  States  some  two  million  chil- 
dren under  sixteen  years  of  age  are  gainfully 
employed.  Of  these,  800,000  are  ten  to  thir- 
teen years  old,  unknown  thousands  under 
ten,  and  400,000  engaged  in  occupations 
usually  deleterious  to  child-life.  '*  Yet  figures 
are  inadequate.      For  the  tragedy  of  the  pres- 

4  Dr.  M.  G.  Schlapp  in  "The  Outlook,"  April  (5,  1013, 
p.  782. 

5  The  New  Encyclopedia  of  Social  Reform,  art.  "Child 
Labor." 


32     LABOR  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

ent  is  only  suggestive  of  the  consequences  yet 
to  ensue.  The  evil  does  not  end  with  the  pain 
and  pleading  of  the  children.  Beyond  these  is 
the  evil  which  society  must  suffer  in  its  most 
vital  interests, — the  standard  of  living,  the  in- 
tegrity of  the  home,  and  the  future  intelligence 
and  efficiency  of  its  citizens.  In  some  coming 
crisis  of  our  historj^,  the  alternative  may  then 
be  decided  by  the  votes  of  illiterates  and  de- 
generates, or  its  armies  destroyed  by  bacilli 
more  deadly  than  bullets. 

3.     UNJUST  DISTRIBUTION 

Labor  complains  of  three  conditions  under 
which  it  gets  less  than  its  equitable  share  of 
the  total  economic  product. 

First,  when  it  gets  less  than  a  living  wage. 
The  New  York  City  Charity  Organization 
estimates  $800  to  $900  per  annum  as  a  living 
wage  in  that  city  for  a  man  with  average 
family.^  In  this  light  ponder  the  fact  that 
some  million  families  enjoy  an  annual  income 
of  less  than  $500  ^  and  that  our  average  fac- 
tory wages  are  $572.  ^  Surely  all  family-in- 
tomes  falling  below  the  latter  average  are  less 
than  a  living  wage,   and  such   families   include 

6  See  E.  T.  Devine:  "Misery  and  its  causes"  pp.  107- 
108. 

7  See  articles  in  the  American  Macfazine,  March,  1907, 
by  J.  Jacobs  and  March,  1910,  by  Ida  M.  Tarbell. 

8  See  "The  Survey,"  Sept.  3,  1910,  p.  810. 


LABOR  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER     33 

a  large  proportion  of  our  working  population. 
Again,  labor  receives  less  than  its  share  when- 
ever others  receive  more  than  theirs.  One  per 
cent,  of  our  people  own  50  per  cent,  of  the 
wealth  and  nine  per  cent,  own  71  per  cent.^ 
Can  we  believe  that  one  per  cent,  of  the  people 
have  earned  as  much  as  the  other  ninety-nine 
per  cent.?  Or  nine  per  cent,  of  us,  two  and  a 
half  times  as  much  as  the  other  ninet3'-one  per 
cent.?  The  presumption  thus  raised  seems  quite 
conclusive  when  we  note  the  sources  of  these  for- 
tunes. The  New  York  Tribune  has  published 
a  list  of  1103  millionaires  in  that  city.  It  fur- 
ther appears  that  three-fourths  of  these  men 
had  derived  their  wealth  chiefly  from  some  form 
of  economic  surplus, — as  monopoly,  marginal 
betting,  unearned  increment  of  land,  some  sort 
of  "special  privilege," — or  in  one  word, 
plunder.  For  all  this  wealth  had  been  pro- 
duced by  somebody,  and  any  part  of  it  not  pro- 
duced by  those  who  have  taken  it,  must  have 
been  taken  from  those  who  have  produced  it, 
namely,  the  v.^age-earning  class.  All  this  gives 
too  much  reality  to  such  familiar  and  unlovely 
phrases  as  "predatory  wealth/'  "the  favored 
few,"  and  "the  disinherited  masses."  As 
Henry  D.  Lloyd  said,  "The  fortunes  of  these 
lords    of    industry    and    these    interceptors    of 

9  See  J.   Bascom:  "Social  Theory,"  p.  269,  and   R.   T. 
Ely:  "Socialism  and  Social  Reform,"  pp.  2~i-215. 


34     LABOR  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

trade  are  not  remuneration  for  services, — they 
are  the  ransom  paid  by  the  people  for  their 
lives." 

Thirdly,  it  appears  that  labor  receives  less 
than  its  share  when  it  receives  a  diminishing 
proportion  of  the  increase  of  wealth.  Note 
that  it  is  not  said  "portion"  but  "proportion." 
For  the  following  calculations  approximate 
correctness,  not  absolute  exactness,  is  claimed. ^^ 
From  1860  to  1880  the  per  capita  wealth  of  the 
country  increased  70  per  cent.,  while  real  wages 
(measured  in  purchasing  power)  had  not  in- 
creased, perhaps  had  slightly  decreased.  From 
1881  to  1900  per  capita  wealth  had  increased 
43  per  cent,  and  real  wages  not  more  than  25 
per  cent.  From  1900  to  1910  money-wages  in- 
creased about  19  per  cent.,  but  owing  to  dis- 
proportionate increase  in  prices,  real  wages  de- 
creased at  least  11  per  cent.  And  yet,  during 
only  four  years  of  this  latter  period  the  na- 
tional wealth  had  increased  twenty  billion  dol- 
lars,  the    greatest    advance   in   material   pros- 

10  Cf.  R.  T.  Ely:  "The  Evolution  of  Industrial  So- 
ciety," pp.  103,  113-113;  W.  Gladden:  "Applied  Chris- 
tianity," p.  1x70;  the  Aldrich  Senate  Report,  1893,  on 
"Wholesale  Prices,  Wages,"  etc.,  Part  I,  p.  100;  the  pub- 
lications of  the  American  Statistical  Association,  March, 
1899,  article  by  Professor  C.  J.  Bullock;  The  New  En- 
cyclopaedia of  Social  Reform,  p.  1266;  Bulletins  of  the 
U.  S.  Bureau  of  Labor,  1900,  p.  914,  and  March,  1903, 
p.  235;  "The  OuUook,"  March  12,  1910,  p.  570. 


LABOR  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER     35 

perity  ever  recorded  in  the  history  of  any  na- 
tion. 

Again  tlie  wrong  to  labor  re-acts  upon 
societ3^  For  social  cohesion  is  weakened  and 
social  progress  checked  when  a  great  social 
class,  unable  to  share  proportionately  in  the 
general  prosperity,  is  thus  fore-doomed  to 
thwarted  effort  and  chronic  discontent.  With 
regard  to  the  rich  who  will  not  work  and  the 
poor  who  can't  get  work,  labor  has  a  grievance 
until  all  men  are  laborers. 

4.     UNFAIR  DISCRIMINATION 

Labor  complains  that  its  cause  has  not  been 
given  an  impartial  hearing,  and  that  the  higher 
ideals  and  influences  of  the  labor  movement 
and  of  the  labor  unions  have  not  been  duly 
recognized.  The  public  press  is  necessarily 
owned  by  capital  and  edited  by  men  belonging 
to  the  so-called  "higher  classes,"  and  hence,  in 
spite  of  good  intentions,  often  seems  to  give 
labor  less  than  a  square  deal.  For  instance, 
the  frequent  assumption  that  labor-unionism  is 
nothing  else  than  organized  disorder  is  largely 
due  to  the  fact  that  the  worse  features  of 
unionism  are  always  given  the  widest  publicity, 
and  the  better  often  quite  ignored.  The  Na- 
tional Civic  Federation,  perhaps  better  quali- 
fied than  any  other  agency  to  render  a  dis- 
criminating and  unbiased  finding,  has  published 


36     LABOR  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

a  most  impressive  protest  against  the  injustice 
thus  done  the  cause  of  labor.  ^^ 

Labor  complains  of  less  than  a  square  deal 
in  the  courts.  Mr.  Roosevelt  thus  defines  the 
position  which  he  holds  in  common  with  the 
representatives  of  the  laboring-class :  "I  do  not 
for  one  moment  believe  that  the  masses  of  our 
judges  are  actuated  by  any  but  worthy  motives. 
Nevertheless,  I  do  believe  that  they  often 
signally  fail  to  protect  the  laboring  man  and 
the  laboring  man's  widow  and  children  in  their 
just  rights  and  that  heart-breaking  and  pitiful 
injustice  too  often  results  therefrom;  and  this 
primarily  because  our  judges  lack  either  the 
opportunity  or  the  power  thoroughly  to  under- 
stand the  working  man's  and  working  woman's 
position  and  vital  needs."  ^-  In  this  regard  it 
is  to  be  noted,  first,  that  the  expense  of  litiga- 
tion largely  nullifies  for  the  poor  man  the  prin- 
ciple of  equality  before  the  law.  Justice  at  the 
end  of  his  suit  is  an  empty  promise  unless  mean- 
while he  can  afford  to  pay  for  "legal  talent" 
and  "the  law's  delay."  It  is  no  less  an  au- 
thority than  President  Taft  who  says :  "The 
one  thing  which  disgraces  our  civilization  to- 
day is  the  delays  of  civil  and  criminal  justice 
and  these  delays  always  work  in  favor  of  the 

11  See  Adams  and  Sumner:  "Labor  Problems,"  p.  211n. 
Cf.  J.  Bascom:  "Social  Theory,"  pp.  109,  ll*. 

12  "The  New  Nationalism." 


LABOR  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER     37 

man  with  the  longest  purse."  ^^  At  a  recent 
date  there  were  pending  in  the  courts  two  cases 
of  workinginen's  claims  still  undertermined 
after  ten  years  of  litigation  and  another  after 
eleven  years.  ^"^  And  now  comes  the  report  of 
damages  awarded  to  an  injured  workingman 
after  twenty-two  years  of  litigation,  the  crown- 
ing disgrace  of  American  judicature.  ^^  In 
nearly  every  nation  of  Europe  these  poor 
people  would  have  received  immediate  justice 
without  haA^ng  to  go  to  law  at  all.  Further- 
more, as  said  by  Greorge  L.  Bolen,  one  of  the 
severest  critics  of  organized  labor,  "The  courts 
are  too  often  bound  unduly  by  the  views  and 
predilections  of  the  capitalistic  class  to  which 
by  birth  and  association  they  belong."  ^^ 
This  may  account  in  part  for  some  of  the 
antiquated  precedents  which  govern  employers' 
liability,  freedom  of  contract,  class  legislation, 
and  the  writ  of  injunction,  all  serving  to  put 
working  people  at  a  disadvantage  in  the  courts. 
As  to  injunctions,  laboring-men  may  often  be 
in  the  wrong.  Nevertheless  many  of  us  will 
agree  that  the  workingmcn  are  in  the  right 
when  protesting  that  the  injunction  power  is 
abused  when  used  as  follows:  (1)  to  enjoin  men 

13  See  McClure's  Magazine,  June,  1910,  p.  151. 
1*  Do,  p.  154. 

15  See  "The  Outlook,"  Dec.  23,  1911,  p.  924. 

16  "Getting  a  Living,"  p.  565. 


38     LABOR  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

from  doing  concertedly  what  they  have  the 
legal  right  to  do  individually :  (2)  as  a  sub- 
terfuge for  depriving  unconvicted  men  of  trial 
by  jury:  (3)  to  suspend  men's  rights  without 
notice  and  then  leave  them  undetermined  pend- 
ing a  long-deferred  hearing. 

At  present  there  is  a  great  outcry  against 
any  criticism  of  the  courts  at  all.  Mr.  Roose- 
velt, no  less  than  Mr.  Gompers,  is  denounced 
because  he  ventures  to  express  an  opinion  of 
his  own  regarding  certain  adjudications.  Now 
both  may  be  wrong  in  their  criticisms  but  it 
does  not  follow  that  criticism  is  wrong.  If  so, 
then  the  courts  themselves  must  be  guilty  of 
the  same  wrong,  for  they  criticise  one  another. 
And  every  member  of  our  Supreme  Court  itself 
must  often  thus  do  wrong,  for  every  one  of  them 
has  often  dissented  from  the  decisions  of  the 
majority.  And  Abraham  Lincoln  must  have 
been  wrong,  for  his  criticisms  of  the  Supreme 
Court  makes  Mr.  Roosevelt's  sound  tame.  And 
history  itself  must  be  wrong,  for  it  now  sanc- 
tions Lincoln's  criticisms  of  the  Drcd  Scott  de- 
cision. The  ti-uth  is  that  a  judicial  decision  is 
usually  something  more  than  a  declaration  of 
the  law;  it  is  a  declaration  of  how  the  law  ap- 
plies to  facts.  Granting  that  the  judges  are  the 
best  judges  of  the  law,  it  is  still  true  that  the 
sociologist,  the  legislator,  the  labor  leader,  or 
even  the  "man  on  the  street,"  may  be  a  better 


LABOR  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER     39 

judge  of  the  facts  to  which  the  law  is  applied. 
Hence  the  laboring  man  is  not  necessarily  prc- 
sumptous  when  he  makes  a  calm  and  candid  ap- 
peal from  the  courts  to  public  opinion.  To 
claim  Infallibility  for  the  courts  is  no  less  than 
political  superstition.  The  courts  make  no 
such  claim  for  themselves.  Indeed  it  is  a  Jus- 
tice of  the  Supreme  Court  of  New  York  who  has 
lately  written  the  following  remarkable  words : 
"Confidence  in  our  courts  does  not  require 
that  their  decisions  on  economic  questions  shall 
be  regarded  as  binding  rules  of  political  con- 
duct on  such  questions.  ...  So  long  as 
our  courts  exercise  this  power  to  pass  upon  the 
constitutionality  of  statutes  which  reflect  legis- 
lative policy  on  matters  affecting  the  common 
good,  so  long  will  the  principles  of  government 
underlying  their  decisions  in  such  cases  be  sub- 
ject to  debate."  ^^ 

Such  is  labor's  complaint  against  the  social 
order,  with  this  added, — the  under-valuation  of 
human  life  by  a  world  that  over-values  gold 
and  gain.  Nor  can  it  be  dismissed  by  saying 
that  the  labor-movement  itself  is  only  a  mani- 
festation of  greed,  the  sordid  envy  of  "the  have- 
nots"  for  "the  haves."  For  the  demand  for 
higher  wages  and  shorter  hours  simply  voices 
the  demand  for  justice,  and  this  it  is  that  gives 
moral  authority  to  the  labor-movement. 

17  See  "The  Outlook,"  March  4,  1911,  p.  489, 


40     LABOR  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Nor  can  we  silence  labor's  complaint  by  say- 
ing that  it  is  the  best  paid  labor  which  com- 
plains the  most.  This  cynical  commonplace 
has  its  reproof  in  the  words  of  Thomas  Car- 
lyle:  "No  doubt  of  it.  The  best  paid  work- 
men are  they  alone  that  can  so  complain !  How 
shall  he,  the  handloomweaver,  who  in  the  day 
that  is  passing  over  him  has  to  find  food  for 
the  day,  strike  work?  If  he  strike  work,  he 
starves  within  the  week.  He  is  past  complaint ! 
The  fact  itself,  however,  is  one  which,  if  we 
consider  it,  leads  us  into  still  deeper  regions  of 
the  malady.  .  .  .  It  is  not  what  a  man 
has  outwardly  or  wants  that  constitutes  the 
happiness  or  misery  of  him.  .  .  .  It  is  the 
feeling  of  injustice  that  is  insupportable  to  all 
men.  .  .  .  No  man  can  bear  it,  or  ought 
to  bear  it.  A  deeper  law  than  any  parchment- 
law  whatsoever,  a  law  written  direct  by  the 
hand  of  God  in  the  inmost  being  of  man,  in- 
cessantly protests  against  it.  What  is  injus- 
tice.'' Another  name  for  disorder,  for  unverac- 
ity,  unreality,  a  thing  which  veracious  created 
Nature,  even  because  it  is  not  Chaos  and  a 
waste-whirling  baseless  Phantasm,  rejects  and 
disowns.  It  is  not  the  outward  pain  of  injus- 
tice; that,  were  it  even  the  flaying  of  the  back 
with  knotted  scourges,  the  severing  of  the  head 
with  guillotines,  is  comparatively  a  small  mat- 
ter.    The   real    smart   is    the   soul's   pain    and 


LABOR  AND  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER     41 

stigma,  the  hurt  inflicted  on  the  moral  self. 
The  rudest  clown  must  draw  himself  up  into  an 
attitude  of  battle,  and  resistance  to  the  death, 
if  such  be  off'ered  him.  He  cannot  live  under 
it ;  his  own  soul  aloud,  and  all  the  universe,  with 
silent  continual  beckonings,  says  'It  cannot 
be.'  "  ^^  Thus  the  labor  problem  is  more  than  a 
sordid  conflict  between  "the  haves  and  the  have- 
nots."  Its  concern  is  with  the  rights  of  men 
and  therefore  with  the  will  of  God.  And  with 
a  great  poet  of  modern  Christendom  we  may 
well  believe  that  the  Christ  sees  and  cares : 

"O  Nazareth  Carpenter  who  curst  ' 

The  pride  and  avarice  of  thy  day, 
We  would  observe  thy  birth,  but  first 
Thy  Sermon  on  the  Mount  obey. 

"If  thou  shouldst  come  once  more  to  men 
In  this,  thy  later  promised  land, 

Would  not  Thy  great  heart  break  again 
To  find  these  wrongs  on  every  hand. 

"Labor,  heart-smitten,  left  to  die, 

Beneath  the  feet  of  Conquest  hurled. 
Or,  lifting  Hatred's  torch  on  high. 
Wreaking  revenge  upon  the  world." 
18  "Chartism":  Chapters  ly  and  V. 


V 
THE  CHEAPNESS  OF  HUMAN  LIFE 

Labor's  gravest  charge  against  our  economic 
system  is  the  under-appraisement  of  human  life. 
Business  proceeds  too  largely  on  the  assump- 
tion that  money  is  worth  more  than  men. 

It  is  reliably  estimated  that  30,000  wage- 
earners  are  killed  annually  by  industrial  acci- 
dents and  500,000  seriously  injured;^  that  there 
are  over  13,000,000  cases  of  sickness  each  year 
among  industrial  workers  and  50,000  deaths 
from  industrial  diseases ;  that  at  least  one-third 
of  this  suffering  and  mortality  is  preventable ; 
that  the  pecuniary  loss  to  the  laboring  class 
from  these  causes  is  at  least  three-quarters  of  a 
billion  dollars  annually.^  It  was  a  startling 
coincidence  that  during  three  years  of  the  Boer 
War  the  number  of  British  soldiers  killed  was 
almost  an  exact  equation  with  the  number  killed 
on  American  railways   during  the  same  three 

1  Bulletin  of  the  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Labor,  1906. 

2  "The  American  Labor  Legislation  Review,"  Jan., 
1911,  p.  127,  and  "The  Prevention  of  Industrial  Acci- 
dents," pp.  1  and  2,  published  by  the  Fidelity  and 
Casualty  Company  of  New  York. 

42 


CHEAPNESS  OF  HUMAN  LIFE      43 

years.^  In  the  United  States  in  1909  nine  rail- 
way employees  were  killed  every  twenty-four 
hours  and  one  either  killed  or  injured  every 
seven  minutes.*  "At  the  present  rate  it  would 
take  only  se^cnteen  3'^ears  to  kill  or  injure  all 
the  railway  employees  on  the  rolls."  "  Or  what 
could  be  more  startling  than  the  fact  that  the 
number  of  lives  sacrificed  to  the  industries  of  the 
United  States  during  the  last  four  years  is 
about  the  same  as  the  number  killed  in  battle 
during  the  four  years  of  the  Civil  Wajr?  It  is 
also  a  tragic  record  that  among  the  employees 
of  at  least  ten  of  the  leading  industries  of  the 
United  States  from  one-third  to  one-half  the 
deaths  were  due  to  tuberculosis  and  that  one- 
third  to  two-fifths  of  these  fatal  cases  of  tuber- 
culosis were  fairly  attributable  to  the  character 
of  the  employment.  In  other  words,  taking 
account  of  only  a  single  disease  and  of  no  acci- 
dents, these  industries  are  chargeable  with  eleven 
to  twenty  per  cent,  of  all  deaths  among  their 
employees.*^  Still  more  tragic  are  the  records 
of  certain  great  insurance  companies  showing 
that    the   average   death-rate   among   working- 

3J.  G.  Brooks:  "The  Social  Unrest,"  p.  210. 

4  D.  L.  Cease  in  "The  American  Labor  Legislation  Re- 
view," Jan.,  1911,  p.  43. 

5  McClure's  Magazine,  June,  1910,  p.  165. 

6  Publication  No.  10  of  the  American  Association  for 
Labor  Legislation. 


44      CHEAPNESS  OF  HUMAN  LIFE 

men  at  their  most  productive  age — 25  to  35 
years — is  nearly  twice  as  great  as  the  death 
rate  among  men  engaged  in  other  than  manual 
occupations."^ 

We  must  remember  that  this  is  more  than  a 
matter  of  dry  statistics.  Back  of  the  statistics 
are  human  beings.  An  "industrial  accident" 
does  not  mean  merely  that  another  unit  is  to 
be  added  to  a  column  of  figures.  It  means  the 
"agony  of  the  crushed  arm  or  the  anguished 
leap  of  the  workman's  nerve  under  the  boiling 
metal."  It  means  the  rush  of  the  ambulance, 
the  carnage  of  the  operating  table,  the  long 
nights  of  burning  thirst  and  infernal  delirium  in 
the  hospital.  It  means  the  asylum  or  the  alms- 
house. Nor  is  an  "occupational  disease"  just 
a  medical  classification.  It  means,  for  instance, 
"phossy  jaw,"  a  horror  so  loathsome  that  ex- 
perienced surgeons  sometimes  faint  while  treat- 
ing it,  so  persistent  that  sometimes  life  can  be 
saved  only  by  amputation  of  the  victim's  jaw, 
leaving  him  a  life  worse  than  death.  In  one 
form  or  another  some  human  tragedy  is  repre- 
sented by  every  unit  in  these  thousands  and 
millions  of  industrial  casualties  and  diseases. 
Not  war  alone,  but  work  sometimes,  is  hell. 

Labor  demands  justice,  not  pity.     For  these 

tragedies  of  our  industrial  warfare,  while  due 

7  Louis  D.  Brandeis  in  "The  Outlook,"  June  10,  1911, 
p.  293. 


CHEAPNESS  OF  HUIMAN  LIFE      45 

in  some  cases  to  the  fact  that  they  are  unavoid- 
able, are  due  in  many  cases  to  the  fact  that  it 
would  cost  money  to  avoid  them.  Phosphorus 
necrosis,  the  culminating  horror  of  occupational 
diseases,  is  due  solely  to  an  economy  of  five  per 
cent,  in  the  manufacture  of  matches.  On  one 
of  our  great  railroads  the  casualties  in  1906 
were  2097.  The  next  year  the  road's  traffic 
had  greatly  increased  in  all  respects,  ton-mile- 
age, passenger-mileage,  train-mileage,  and  car- 
mileage,  and  yet  the  casualties  had  diminished 
to  1209  as  the  result  of  an  effective  system  of 
block  signals  and  safety  appliances  installed 
that  year.^  In  the  year  1911  the  Chicago  and 
Northwestern  Railroad  put  into  operation  a 
thorough  system  of  safety  appliances  and  regu- 
lations resulting  in  the  reduction  of  fatal  acci- 
dents among  several  classes  of  employees  in  the 
following  percentages :  train-men  50  per  cent., 
switchmen  40  per  cent.,  station-men  50  per 
cent.,  car-repairers  and  inspectors  85  per  cent.^ 
From  such  data  it  is  no  strained  inferencce  that 
at  least  one-third  of  our  railroad  accidents  has 
been  attributable  to  the  homicidal  parsimony 
which  would  not  pay  for  the  available  safe- 
guards.    In  the  coal  mines  of  the  United  States 

8  See  The  Saturday  Evening  Post,  July  25,  1908,  ar^ 
tide,  "The  Carnage  of  Peace." 

9  See    "The    Northwestern    Christian   Advocate,"    Jan. 
10,  1912. 


46      CHEAPNESS  OF  HUMAN  LIFE 

30,000  men  have  been  killed  during  the  last 
twenty  years,  and  while  we  have  neglected  the 
methods  of  prevention  and  rescue  in  general  use 
in  Europe,  the  annual  death-rate  of  the  coal 
regions  has  been  steadily  rising  here  and  steadily 
declining  there.  Mills  and  machines  afford 
the  same  evidence.  Broken  belts  cause  many 
of  our  cruelest  accidents.  Yet  belts  can  be 
protected.  The  bursting  of  over-pressed 
boilers  in  1905  caused  385  deaths  and  505  in- 
juries in  this  country;  largely  a  needless 
carnage,  as  appears  from  the  fact  that  Great 
Britain  compels  precautions  which  have  kept 
the  number  of  like  casualties  there  at  the  low 
average  of  28  deaths  and  60  injuries  per 
annum  during  a  period  of  twenty  years. ^^  In 
the  year  1906  in  factories  of  one  state  a  hun- 
dred men  were  killed,  or  crippled  for  life,  by 
one  little  shop-device  called  the  set-screw.^^ 
"The  set-screw  stands  up  from  the  surface  of 
the  rapidly  revolving  shafts  and,  as  it  turns, 
catches  dangerously  at  hands  and  clothes. 
For  thirty-five  cents  this  danger-device  could 
be  recast  into  a  safety-device."  Thus  from 
all  ranges  of  industry  come  the  damning  cvi- 

11  The  Saturday  Evening  Post,  loc.  cit. 

12  E.  T.  Davis,  State  Factory  Inspector  of  Illinois, 
quoted  by  W.  Hard  in  "Injured  in  Course  of  Duty." 
See  also  "The  Prevention  of  Industrial  Accidents,"  p. 
185,  (Published  by  the  Fidelity  and  Casualty  Co.  of 
N.  Y). 


CHEAPNESS  OF  HUMAN  LIFE      47 

dcnccs  of  our  national  greed.  Labor's  dcni.uid 
for  legal  protection  to  life  and  limb  is  a  de- 
mand for  the  most  elementary  justice. 

Adequate  justice  would  consist  in  the  pre- 
vention of  these  evils.  So  far  as  this  proves 
impracticable,  the  minimum  of  justice  would 
then  be  assured  compensation.  Yet  the  truth 
is  that  the  doctrines  of  our  courts  as  to  con- 
tributory negligence,  the  negligence  of  fel- 
low-servants, and  the  assumption  of  risks,  are 
such  that  compensation  is  the  exception  rather 
than  the  rule.  It  is  estimated  "that  not  one 
in  eleven  injured  workmen  sues,  and  of  those 
who  sue  not  one  in  ten  recovers."  If  our  in- 
dustries must  consume  arms,  legs,  lungs  and 
lives,  why  shouldn't  we  pay  for  them?  There 
is  moral  authority  hardly  less  than  prophetic 
in  the  demands  which  a  modern  journalist  thus 
puts  to  the  social  conscience:  "Shall  the 
laborer  really  donate  that  arm  to  us,  or  shall 
not  we,  refusing  to  live  on  lost  arms,  return 
to  him  the  mere,  but  exact,  commercial  value 
of  the  loss  he  has  sustained?  Why  shouldn't 
every  industry  carry  the  burden  of  its  own 
killed  and  wounded?  Why  shouldn't  compen- 
sation for  disability  be  just  as  much  a  cost  of 
the  business  as  it  is  of  the  cost  of  war?  Why 
shouldn't  the  industrial  soldier,  meeting  his 
death  in  forms  as  terrible  as  those  of  any 
battle-field,  die  knowing  that  he  will  leave,  if 


48      CHEAPNESS  OF  HUMAN  LIFE 

not  glory,  at  least  a  few  years'  food  to  his 
family?  Why  shouldn't  society,  having  in- 
vented machines  which  make  business  one  long 
war,  treat  the  enlisted  men  at  least  like  en- 
listed men  and,  if  they  are  incapacitated,  as- 
sign them  temporarily  or  permanently,  to  the 
rank  and  pay  of  pensioners  of  peace?"  ^^  And 
it  seems  about  time  that  Emerson's  prophecy 
should  come  time :  "When  it  is  presented  to  the 
American  people,  I  believe  they  will  say  it  is 
just  as  fair  to  charge  up  every  year  the 
depreciation  in  men  as  it  is  to  charge 
up  the  depreciation  in  machinery  and  build- 
ings." '^ 

These  considerations  call  for  the  enactment 
of  the  following  program.  (1)  The  radical 
modification  of  the  common-law  defenses 
against  employers'  liability.  (2)  The  es- 
tablishment of  governmental  institutions  for 
the  invention  of  safety  and  sanitary  devices, 
and  for  the  scientific  study,  prevention  and 
treatment  of  occupational  diseases.  (3) 
Laws  enforcing  the  use  of  every  approved 
safety-mechanism  and  sanitary  provision  in 
industry.  (4)  Laws  insuring  equitable,  im- 
mediate and  certain  compensation  to  all  victims 
of  industrial  casualty  and  disease,  or  their 
families.      The  latter  measure  would  be  doubly 

13  W.  Hard,  op.  cit. 

14  Essay  onj  Compensation. 


CHEAPNESS  OF  HUMAN  LIFE      49 

efficacious.  Beside  affording  effective  relief  to 
actual  sufferers,  it  would  also  reduce  such 
suffering  to  the  minimum ;  for  when  it  must 
all  be  paid  for  in  full,  then  it  will  be  found 
cheaper  to  employ  every  safeguard.  The 
equities  of  this  matter  are  thus  summarized  by 
the  Bishops  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal 
Church  in  their  official  address  of  1908:  "So 
far  as  greed  makes  such  things  possible  the 
Master  whom  we  serve  demands  from  us  the 
protest  of  his  Church  and  for  the  sufferers  the 
tendcrest  sympathy.  The  love  we  owe  our 
brother  man  warrants  and  compels  us  to  plead 
for  greater  protection  against  accident  and 
greater  mercy  and  justice,  even  to  care  in  old 
age,  for  the  wounded  and  crippled  from  the 
industrial  battlefield." 

Here,  as  everywhere,  the  fear  that  it  will 
cost  too  much  to  do  right,  is  a  fear  as  foolish 
as  it  is  wicked.  The  one  cost  which  can  be 
afforded  under  no  circumstances  is  the  present 
cost  in  life  and  limb.  Justice  to  labor  involves 
injustice  to  no  one.  There  would  be  no  in- 
justice to  employers.  The  cost  of  such  com- 
pensation would  be  shifted  from  the  employers 
to  society  at  large.  Like  any  other  expense 
common  to  all  who  are  conducting  a  given  in- 
dustry, this  expense  also  enters  into  the  costs 
of  production  and  is  finally  paid  by  the  public 
as  an  element  in  price.     In  other  words,  it  is 


50      CHEAPNESS  OF  HUMAN  LIFE 

essentially  an  indirect  tax  to  be  paid  by  the 
consumer. 

Yet  even  to  the  public  at  large,  working- 
men's  compensation  would  cost  little  or  noth- 
ing in  the  end.  For  the  immediate  expense 
Avould  be  ultimately  balanced  by  several  econ- 
omies. First  of  all,  a  large  proportion  of 
the  present  number  of  injuries,  Jllnesses,  and 
deaths  would  then  be  averted  by  improved 
preventive  measures.  In  consequence  of  this 
happy  result  there  would  follow  ultimately  a 
great  reduction  in  present  expenses  of  liability- 
insurance  and  damage-suits,  with  immediate 
saving  to  industry  and  ultimate  saving  to  the 
public.  Furthermore,  pubHic  charities  would 
be  relieved  of  enormous  charges  made  upon 
them  for  the  support  of  the  thousands  now  re- 
duced to;  dependency  through  our  dangerous 
and  unsanitary  industries.  In  Chicago  it  was 
ascertained  that  109  out  of  1000  cases  of 
destitution  were  due  in  whole  or  in  part  to 
some  kind  of  industrial  accident.  Again,  the 
industrial  efficiency  and  social  worth  of  thou- 
sands would  become  an  increasing  asset  to 
society  through  coming  generations  as  the  re- 
sult of  the  abolition  of  the  woman-labor,  child- 
labor,  dependency  and  delinquency  of  which  our 
present  system  of  non-compensation  is  a 
prolific  source. 

Nor   is   there    any   grave   danger   that    such 


CHEAPNESS  OF  HUMAN  LIFE      51 

laws  may  drive  away  industries  from  the 
states  which  enact  them  to  others  which  do 
not.  As  we  have  just  seen,  industry  would 
thus  be  put  to  little,  if  any,  net  expense. 
Furthermore,  actual  experience  shows  that 
other  labor  laws,  even  when  involving  much 
immediate  expense,  have  not  driven  away  in- 
dustries from  the  states  enacting  them.^^  In 
this  regard  it  is  hardly  less  than  decisive  that 
the  German  Empire,  subject  to  strict  and 
comprehensive  compensation  and  insurance 
laws,  has  yet  been  conspicuous  in  its  recent  in- 
dustrial development  in  spite  of  the  competi- 
tion of  the  world.  Furthermore,  our  Ameri- 
can states  are  carefully  forestalling  the  diffi- 
culty in  question,  first,  by  tentatively  regulating 
the  scale  of  legal  compensation  with  regard  to 
the  admitted  wastefulness  of  the  present  sys- 
tem and  the  probable  economies  of  the  new  sys- 
tem; second,  by  co-operative  legislation,  framed 
and  enacted  after  conference  of  the  representa- 
tives of  the  several  states,  or  by  directly  copy- 
ing one  another's  enactments. 

Christian  men  of  to-day  must  remember  the 
Priest  and  the  Levite  of  old  who  passed  by  on 
the  other  side, — possibly  not  so  much  heart- 
less as  busy  men,  probably  engaged  just  then 
in  "church-work."  And  while  these  church- 
men hurried  on  unheeding,  the  great  work  of 
15  See  G.  L.  Bolen:  "Getting  a  Living,"  p.  597, 


52      CHEAPNESS  OF  HUMAN  LIFE 

the  Church  was  left  to  a  despised  "outsider," 
who  did  it  well.  To-day  humanity  lies  plun- 
dered and  bleeding  by  the  highway.  God  for- 
bid that  we  should  pass  by  on  the  other  side. 


VI 

WHAT    CHURCH-MEN    SHOULD    KNOW 
ABOUT  THE  LABOR  UNIONS 

The  most  noteworthy  criticism  of  the  labor 
unions  ever  published  is  probably  the  recent 
work  of  President  Eliot  entitled,  "The  Future 
of  Trade-Unionism  and  Capitalism  in  a  Demo- 
cracy." And  yet  President  Eliot  concedes 
therein  that  "the  efforts  which  trade-unions 
have  made  to  improve  the  conditions  of  em- 
ployment in  all  the  chief  industries  -which  sup- 
port civilized  society  are  so  commendable  that 
society  at  large  ought  to  be  patient  with  the 
false  theories  or  bad  practices  which  have  im- 
paired or  counteracted  their  work."  ^  And 
George  L.  Bolen,  a  critic  no  less  severe,  char- 
acterizes unionism  as  a  "great  and  noble 
movement  for  the  upliftment  of  humanity" 
with  "a  long  array  of  achievements  that 
proved  as  beneficial  to  society  as  to  its  own  ad- 
herents." - 

To  enumerate  some  of  the  achievements  for 
social  welfare  which  command  such  commenda- 

1  Op.  cit.,  p.  51. 

2  "Getting  a  Living,"  pp.  179,  288. 

53 


54      CHURCH-MEN  SHOULD  KNOW 

tion  from  the  most  uncompromising  critics  is 
the  purpose  of  this  chapter.  For  several  rea- 
sons appreciation  seems  here  and  now  more 
timely  than  criticism.  First,  because  such 
criticisms  are  already  familiar,  perhaps  too 
familiar.  Again,  because  the  social  situation 
will  be  the  more  profitably  discussed,  not  by  ap- 
portioning blame,  but  by  awarding  honor 
wherever  due  and  whenever  possible.  Fin- 
ally, because  it  is  the  right  of  any  in- 
stitution to  be  judged  by  its  fixed  ideals 
and  net  results  rather  than  by  its  in- 
cidental methods  and  occasional  abuses ;  other- 
wise, the  banking  system  and  monogamous 
marriage,  even  the  Church  and  the  State,  as 
justly  as  the  labor-union,  would  stand  con- 
demned. We  will  do  well  indeed  to  heed  the 
eloquent  counsel  of  Bishop  Mclntyre:  "Judge 
the  union  by  its  best,  not  by  its  worst.  Paul 
cried,  with  lifted  hands  in  chains,  'Remember 
my  bonds.'  He  could  not  do  all  he  would. 
Labor  is  beset  with  bitter  conditions.  To 
fling  censure  is  easy,  and  gelatinous  es- 
says concocted  from  a  denatured  Bible  are  use- 
less." 3 

1.      The  organization  of  labor  has  elevated  the 
general  standard  of  living. 

The    standard    of    living    is    that   degree    of 
3  See  "The  Methodist  Review,"  March,  1912,  p.  232. 


CHURCH-MEN  SHOULD  KNOW     55 

economic  good  which  a  social  class  is  able  to 
maintain  as  the  material  basis  of  its  life. 
"Beyond  all  controversy,  that  frightful  de- 
terioration of  the  industrial  classes  which  the 
large  system  of  industry  set  in  deadly  opera- 
tion has  been  arrested,  and  the  lot  of  the  labor- 
ing man  has  been  vastly  improved  during  the 
last  seventy-five  years.  .  .  .  No  such  hor- 
rible living  conditions  can  be  found  to-day  in 
the  great  factory  towns  of  Great  Britain ; 
even  the  submerged  tenth  arc  living  far  more 
decently  now  than  the  average  mechanic  was 
living  then.  Even  Pittsburg,  in  all  its  misery, 
is  a  paradise  compared  with  Manchester  and 
Glasgow  in  the  third  and  fourth  decades  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  Many  causes  have 
wrought  together  to  produce  this  improve- 
ment, but  the  students  of  social  science  agree 
in  their  judgment  that  the  most  efficient  cause 
of  that  improvement  has  been  the  organiza- 
tion of  labor."  ^ 

This  is  unionism's  noblest  social  service. 
More  than  that,  it  is  the  noblest  possible  ser- 
vice to  social  welfare.  For  tlie  workingman's 
standard  of  living  means  nothing  else  than  the 
effectiveness  of  his  purpose  to  participate  in 
the  civilization  and  progress  of  humanity. 
"The  rising  standards  of  living  are  due  to  the 

<  Washington  Gladden  in  "The  Outlook,"  March  4, 
1911,  p.  502. 


56      CHURCH-MEN  SHOULD  KNOW 

ideal  which  religion  has  taught  us  all  to  have 
of  manhood  and  womanhood,  wifehood  and 
childhood."  ^  The  sociology  of  the  times  seems 
unanimous  in  the  view  that  only  as  the  stand- 
ard of  living  rises  can  civilized  society  be  saved 
from  the  alternative  disasters  of  general  over- 
population on  the  one  hand  and  the  out- 
populating  power  of  inferior  stocks  on  the 
other.  "The  rosy  glow  thrown  upon  the 
future  by  the  progress  of  the  industrial  arts 
proves  but  a  false  dawn  unless  the  common 
people  acquire  new  wants  and  raise  the  plane 
upon  which  they  multiply."  ^ 

^.  The  shortening'  of  the  labor-dai/,  averag- 
ing in  modern  times  at  least  three 
hours,  is  chiefly  to  the  credit  of  the 
unions. 

To  the  workers  this  is  more  than  an  economic 
gain ;  it  is  a  spiritual  gain.  Again,  it  is 
more  than  a  gain  to  the  workers ;  it  is  a 
gain  to  society  at  large.  For  it  "has  doubt- 
less been  the  main  cause  of  the  rise  of 
British  and  American  workmen  in  efficiency, 
intelligence,       and       capable      citizenship — the 

5  Graham  Taylor  in  "The  Social  Application  of  Re- 
ligion," p.  101. 

6  E.  A.  Ross:  "The  Foundations  of  Sociology,"  p. 
580,  ff. 


CHURCH-MEN  SHOULD  KNOW      57 

essential  elements   of  strength   in   a  nation."  '^ 

3.     Organized   labor   is   one   of   the   chief   de- 
fenses of  public  health. 

Every  over-worked  and  debilitated  laborer  is 
a  ready  transmitter  of  all  the  germ-diseases, 
and  the  unions,  in  their  successes  against  ex- 
cessive hours  and  over-speeding,  have  actually 
been  defending  health  and  life  for  all  of  us. 
Their  effective  campaigns  against  tuberculosis, 
with  such  incidents  as  their  hospital-homes  for 
consumptives  and  the  epoch-making  achieve- 
ments of  the  cigar-makers'  union  in  greatly 
reducing  the  abnormal  prevalence  of  the  "white 
plague"  in  that  industry,  is  a  matter  of  well- 
known  and  honorable  record.*^  The  sanitary 
reforms  of  the  New  York  and  Chicago  bake- 
shops,  whereby  the  bread  of  millions  has  been 
cleansed  from  unspeakable  filth  and  deadly 
germs,  are  praiseworthy  beyond  words  to  the 
unions  which  fought  the  good  fight  for  all  the 
people.^  Their  relentless  crusade  against  the 
tenement  sweat-shop,  the  prolific  breeding- 
place  of  consumption,  scarlet  fever  and  diph- 
theria, has  probably  saved  first  and  last  the 
lives  of  thousands  who  know  little  and  care 
less  about  the  labor-unions. 

TG.  L.  Bolen:  "Getting  a  Living,"  p.  401  ff.  and  746. 
Cf.  The  New  Encyclopedia  of  Social  Reform,  p.  1:226. 

8  See  C.  Stelzle:  "The  Church  and  Labor,"  p.  68-69. 

»See  "The  Survey,"  June  18,  1910,  p.  483  flF. 


58      CHURCH-MEN  SHOULD  KNOW 

Jf..  The  unions  afford  the  chief  protection 
against  the  exploitation  of  the  labor  of 
women  and  children. 

These  abuses  really  amount  to  the  present 
exhaustion  of  the  future  assets  of  society. 
And  thus  the  labor  union  not  only  strives 
chivalrously  for  woman  and  child;  it  strives 
thus  for  the  rights  of  posterity  and  even  the 
possible*  permanency   of   civilization.^*^ 

5.  Unionism  is  a  safeguard  against  unemploy- 

ment  and   its   social   ill-consequences. 

By  their  service  as  employment  bureaus,  and 
again  by  their  "out-of-work"  benefits,  the 
unions  seem  to  render  more  effective  service 
than  any  other  agencies   for  the  like  purpose. 

6.  The  benefit  funds  of  the  unions  are  among 

the  great  benevolences  of  the  age. 

Nearly  all  pay  burial  expenses  of  members 
and  some  provide  homes  or  pensions  for  the 
aged  and  ill.  In  one  year  the  Brotherhood 
of  Locomotive  Engineers  paid  $800,000  in 
death  and  accident  benefits,^ ^  and  the  unions 
affiliated  with  the  American  Federation  of 
Labor  more  than  four  and  a  half  millions   in 

10  See  "Social  Ministry,"  (edited  by  H.  F.  Ward)  p. 
158;  C.  Stelzle:  "The  Church  and  Labor,"  p.  82;  G.  L. 
Bolen:  "Getting  a  Living,"  p.  479. 

11  G.  L.  Bolen,  op.  cit.,  pp.  173-174. 


CHURCH-MEN  SHOULD  KNOW      59 

benefits  of  all  kinds. ^-  "The  members  of  old 
unions  seldom  appear  on  the  lists  of  recipients 
of  alms  and  trade-unionism  has  come  to  be  one 
of   the    chief   bulwarks    against    pauperism. "^^ 

7.  Unionism  often  protects  employers  against 
unscrupulous  competitors. 
In  every  industry  there  is  likely  to  be  a 
number  of  unprincipled  competitors  who, 
though  usually  a  minority,  are  able  to  "flood 
the  market"  Avith  cheap  goods  produced  by 
under-paid  or  over-worked  labor,  sometimes 
driving  their  more  conscientious  competitors 
out  of  business.  Their  attitude  menaces  alike 
the  interests  of  the  other  employers  and  all  the 
employees  in  the  trade  concerned,  and  the 
trade-unions,  by  exacting  just  and  humane 
terms  from  the  unscrupulous,  are  the  effective 
champions,  not  only  of  the  employees,  but  of 
the  better  and  the  greater  number  of  the  em- 
ployers as  well.^^  Historic  examples  are 
afforded  by  the  strike  of  the  New  York  gar- 
ment-workers in  1904,^^  the  bake-shop  regula- 
tions of  1910  in  the  same  city,^^  the  unionizing 
of  the  Illinois  coal-miners  in  1897,^^  and  very 

12  W.  A.  White  in  "The  Old  Order  Changeth." 

13  C.    R.    Henderson:    "Social   Elements,"   p.    179;    Cf. 
C.  Stelzle:  "The  Church  and  Labor,"  pp.  68-70. 

14  See  J.  G.  Brooks:  "The  Social  Unrest,"  p.  15. 

15  See  McClure's  Magazine,  December,  1904,  p.  138. 
i''"The  Survey,"  June   18,   1910,  p.  483  ff. 

1' G.  L.  Bolen:  "Getting  a  Living,"  p.  731. 


60      CHURCH-MEN  SHOULD  KNOW 

impressively  on  the  occasion  when  the  ribbon 
manufacturers  of  Coventry  contributed  £16,- 
000  to  assist  the  weavers'  union  in  holding 
other  competing  employers  to  the  union  scale 
of  wages. ^^ 

Unionism  further  benefits  employers  by  in- 
creasing the  efficiency  of  labor  and  consequently 
by  increasing  the  quantity  and  impro^^ng  the 
quality  of  the  out-put.  In  spite  of  the  un- 
deniable tendencies  of  rabid  unionism  to  the 
contrary,  union  men  usually  know  that  in  or- 
der to  maintain  they  must  also  earn  a  high 
rate  of  wages ;  that  employers  cannot  in  the 
long  run  pay  more  than  it  pa^^s  to  pay.  If 
the  better  terms  of  employment  procured 
through  the  unions  prove  permanent,  that  is, 
if  they  do  not  thus  exhaust  the  capital  that 
affords  employment,  then  it  is  evident  that  "the 
rise  in  the  standard  of  living  has  been  accom- 
panied by  at  least  an  equal  rise  in  the  stand- 
ard of  working."  The  pressure  of  unionism 
for  higher  wages  also  tends  to  the  extended 
use  of  machinery  and  to  the  improvement  of 
technical  processes  and  industrial  organiza- 
tion, while  these  results  in  turn  require  ever- 
increasing  efficiency  on  the  part  of  the  in- 
dividual worker.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  these 
benefits  accrue  not  only  to  employees  and  their 
employers,  but  ultimately  to  the  public  as  well. 

18  G,  L.  Bolen:  "Getting  a  Living,"  p.  182. 


CHURCH-MEN  SHOULD  KNOW      61 

8.     T rade-unionism  is  a  main  factor  in  popu- 
lar education. 

As  declared  by  the  resolutions  of  the  Fed- 
eral Council  of  Churches :  "By  them  (the  un- 
ions) society  at  large  is  benefited  ...  in 
the  educational  influence  of  the  multitudes 
who  in  the  labor  unions  find  their  chief,  some- 
times their  only,   intellectual  stimulus." 

Unionism  has  been  the  chief  educator  of  the 
co-operative  man.  The  actual  successes  of  the 
unions  depend  on  the  degree  in  which  they  de- 
velop in  their  members  the  co-operative  vir- 
tues of  fraternity,  patience,  discipline,  "team- 
work," self-sacrifice  and  the  collective  exercise 
of  sound  judgment.  As  Shailer  Mathews  de- 
clares :  "There  is  many  a  church  which  in  point 
of  general  altruism  and  loyalty  to  its  profes- 
sions of  high  purpose,  could  not  endure  a  com- 
parison with  the  work  of  some  labor  unions."  ^^ 
Hence  it  is  no  surprise  to  discover  that  co- 
operative enterprises  flourish  where  trade-un- 
ionism has  flourished  and  rarely  anywhere 
else.2'^ 

In  other  wa^-s  also  unionism  has  been  an  effec- 
tive school  of  citizenship.  By  their  continual 
agitation  for  labor  legislation,  the  unionists 
are  compelled  to  think  out  a  political  program 

19  "The  Church  and  the  Changing  Order,"  p.  125. 

20  See  G.  L.  Bolen :  "Getthig  a  Living,"  pp.  88-89. 


62      CHURCH-MEN  SHOULD  KNOW 

which  not  only  pleases  themselves  but  will 
please  the  public  sufficiently  to  procure  its 
legal  enactment  and  enforcement,  and  in  so 
doing  they  must  acquaint  and  relate  themselves 
with  the  political  institutions  and  conditions 
of  the  country. 

Again,  their  successes  in  procuring  a  hu- 
mane degree  of  leisure  and  a  living  wage  make 
possible  for  the  working  classes  the  "time  and 
strength  and  spirit  to  think"  without  which 
good  citizenship  is  impossible, — for  it  is  evi- 
dent that  most  men,  if  compelled  to  work 
twelve  hours  or  more  every  day  of  the  week 
and  to  live  on  meager  supplies  of  the  mere 
animal  necessities,  are  likely  to  become  either 
animals  or  anarchists  in  the  end.  Thus  the 
union  has  promoted  popular  knowledge  of  poli- 
tics, economics  and  the  social  sciences.  Its 
members,  in  attending  to  the  union's  affairs,  to 
its  large  financial  interests,  to  its  general  social 
policies,  have  been  trained  in  business  efficiency. 
It  has  taught  them  how  to  bargain  for  their 
wages,  "perhaps  the  most  useful  to  them  of 
all  earthly  knowledge."  In  short,  it  has 
been  the  great  popular  teacher  of  "associated 
self-help,  the  main  force  in  public  movements." 
Such  considerations  fairly  warrant  the  saying 
of  William  E.  Gladstone  that  "trade  unions 
are  the  bulwarks  of  modem  democracies"  ^^  and 

21  Quoted  by  G.  L.  Bolen:  "Getting  a  Living,"  p.  191. 


CHURCH-MEN  SHOULD  KNOW     63 

Lyman  Abbott's  that  "by  training  in  habits  of 
co-operation  and  combination  unionism  has 
laid  the  foundation  of  future  perfected  social 
democracy."  ^^ 

9.  The  union  is  the  greatest  influence  for  the 

Americanizing  of   the  immigrant,   save 
only  the  public  school. 

After  enumerating  certain  particulars,  Car- 
roll D.  Wright  declares :  "It  is  doubtful  if  any 
other  organization  than  a  trade-union  could 
accomplish  these  things.  .  .  .  Certain  it 
is  that  no  other  organization  is  attempting  to 
do  this,  at  least  not  by  amalgamation,  which 
is  the  only  way  assimilation  can  be  secured 
among  the  foreign  elements."  ^^  Mr.  Wright 
further  points  out  that  it  is  through  the  union 
that  the  immigrant  most  often  hears  that  he  is 
not  the  victim  of  but  a  partner  in  our  govern- 
ment and  must  do  his  part  in  making  the  part- 
nership beneficial  to  all. 

10.  Unionism  is  an  influence  for  law  and  or- 

der. 
It    is    true    that   the   unions    are   not    often 
thought  of  in  this  character  and  too  often  ap- 
pear in  the   contrary  character.      Nevertheless 
this  very  claim  in  their  behalf  can  be  established 

22  See  "The  Outlook,"  August  20,  1911,  p.  881. 

23  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Labor,  Bulletin.  No.  56,  January, 
1905. 


Gi      CHURCH-MEN  SHOULD  KNOW 

on  good  grounds.  There  are  few,  if  any,  laws 
on  the  statute-books  more  important  to  the 
public  welfare  than  those  relating  to  the  in- 
dustrial employment  of  women  and  children, 
sweat-shop  and  tenement  conditions,  industrial 
safety  and  sanitation,  and  the  observance  of 
Sunday  in  industry  and  commerce.  And  it  is 
well-known  that  the  enforcement  of  these  and 
kindred  forms  of  social  legislation,  has  its 
chief  security  in  the  unremitting  vigilance  of 
the  labor  unions. ^^ 

With  regard  to  the  industrial  conflicts  in 
which  the  unions  engage,  the  disorders  with 
which  they  are  too  often  charged  should  in 
justice  be  offset  by  the  active  support  of  the 
law  with  which  they  are  not  often  enough  ac- 
corded their  due  credit.  "For  example,  when 
funerals  were  picketed  in  Chicago  the  grew- 
some  fact  was  heralded  throughout  the  land. 
But  when  a  little  later  in  the  same  city,  a  local 
union  fined  one  of  its  members  for  assaulting 
a  non-union  w^orkman  and  furnished  the  wit- 
nesses to  secure  his  conviction  in  a  criminal 
court,  the  incident  received  only  passing  local 
attention  and  elsewhere  was  ignored.  Again, 
when  a  union  at  Schenectad^'^  that  had  fallen 
under  socialistic  influence,  expelled  a  member 
because  he  belonged  to  the  militia,  the  widely 
published  statement  evoked  severe  and  sweeping 

24  Cf.  "The  Survey,"  June  18,  1910,  p.  488. 


CHURCH-MEN  SHOULD  KNOW      65 

criticisms  of  an  attitude  which  was  ascribed  to 
unionism  in  general.  But  when,  soon  after- 
wards, the  annual  convention  of  garment 
workers  by  a  large  majority  declared  its  sup- 
port of  the  militia,  or  when  INIr.  Gompcrs,  in 
a  trenchant  article,  defended  the  militia,  daily 
journalism  took  no  notice  of  the  fact."  ^''' 

A  well  known  Boston  capitalist  reminds  us 
that  "from  the  beginning  labor  has  had  to 
fight  the  enemy  not  only  from  without  but  from 
within  as  well,  and  this  because,  from  the  very 
nature  of  its  cause,  it  has  had  to  take  in  all 
kinds  of  working  people,  no  matter  whether 
they  were  fit  or  not."-*^  As  an  inevitable  re- 
sult of  this  inevitable  condition  the  reckless 
revolutionary  clement  sometimes  comes  to  the 
front  and  the  top  in  the  unions.  But  we  must 
remember  that  this  is  not  the  rule  but  the  excep- 
tion. For  in  the  unions,  as  everywhere,  the 
men  with  cool  heads  and  steady  nerves  tend 
to  assume  their  natural  leadership,  and  such 
men  well  know  that  the  interests  of  the  union, 
as  well  as  their  own  continued  leadership,  de- 
mand that  the  hot-heads  and  the  fire-eaters  be 
eff'cctually  restrained.  INIuch  current  criticism 
of  the  unions  seems  to  ignore  the  fact  that  the 

25  Report  of  the  Executive  Council  of  the  National 
Civic  Federation  quoted  by  Adams  and  Sumner,  Labor 
Problems,  p.  211n. 

zBSee  "The  Survey,"  Dec,  30,  1911,  p.  ItlS. 


66     CHURCH-MEN  SHOULD  KNOW 

same  disorderly  and  desperate  men  would  still 
exist  even  if  there  were  no  unions,  and  with- 
out the  unions  would  be  far  more  dangerous 
than  they  are  within  the  unions  where  they  are 
associated  with  the  wiser  and  better  men  who 
are  usually  in  the  majority.  This  noiseless 
but  pervasive  restraint  is  more  effective  than 
that  of  the  police  because  it  comes  closer  home. 
Sometimes,  indeed,  this  restraint  proves  in- 
effectual, arson,  dynamiting,  or  street-rioting 
ensues,  the  newspapers  publish  the  horror,  and 
we  all  know  all  about  it.  But  at  most  times 
it  is  effectual,  the  newspapers  publish  nothing 
and  the  rest  of  us  know  nothing  about  it. 
When  a  million  men  merely  behave  themselves 
and  compel  their  associates  to  do  the  same, 
that  does  not  make  a  "story"  for  the  papers, 
but  one  McNamara  with  a  stick  of  dynamite 
always  does.  Without  his  union  and  the  hope  it 
begets,  the  wage-earner,  given  over  to  the  mad 
anger  of  despair,  would  usually  become  a  ter~ 
rible  recruit  to  the  ever-swelling  ranks  of 
anarchy.  "Take  this  fresh  hope  of  better 
days  through  unionism  from  him  and  I  would 
tremble  for  the  commonwealth,"  writes  Bishop 
Mclntyre;  "let  no  black  prejudice  spawned  in 
the  dark  ages  choke  down  the  lid  on  this  safety- 
valve  of  aspiration  lest  the  ship  of  state  be 
imperilled."  ^'^ 

27  See  the  Methodist  Review,  March,  1912,  p.  228. 


CHURCH-MEN  SHOULD  KNOW     67 

11.     Organized     labor     is     an     influence     for 
temperance. 

Unionism  makes  for  a  higher  standard  of 
living.  A  higher  standard  of  living  in  turn 
means  better  homes.  And  good  homes  are  the 
sovereign  remedy  for  saloons.  For  similar 
reasons,  the  shortening  of  the  work-day,  due 
chiefly  to  unionism,  has  generally  promoted 
temperate  habits  among  workers. ^'"^  The 
Knights  of  Labor  have  always  refused  member- 
ship to  employees  of  the  liquor  business.  The 
stereotypers'  union  of  New  York  fines  members 
who  come  on  duty  drunk.  The  Brotherhood  of 
Locomotive  Engineers  requires  total  abstinence 
of  its  members  and  all  the  railway  brother- 
hoods are  rigid  in  their  temperance  regula- 
tions.^^ In  Great  Britain  there  is  a  temper- 
ance society  composed  exclusively  of  walking 
delegates  and  other  union  officials,  its  object 
being  "the  promotion  of  total  abstinence  and 
the  removal  of  trades'  society  meetings  from 
licensed  premises."  Nearly  every  labor-mem- 
ber of  Parliament  belongs  to  it.^*^  A  similar 
movement  is  now  under  way  among  labor 
leaders  in  this  country  and  has  promise  of 
much  influence  and  usefulness.  In  spite  of  the 
affiliation    of   the    bar-tenders'    union    with    the 

28  See  G.  L.  Bolen:  "Getting  a   Living,"  p.  412. 

28  See  G.  L.  Bolen,  op.  cit,  p.  189,  297, 

30  See  C.  Stelzle:  "The  Church  and  Labor,"  p.  76  ff. 


68      CHURCH-MEN  SHOULD  KNOW 

American  Federation  of  Labor,  the  national 
officers  of  the  latter  have  pronounced  them- 
selves strongly  against  the  saloon  and  are 
systematically  endeavoring  to  procure  for  un- 
ions everywhere  meeting  places  other  than 
saloon-premises.  The  Federation  in  a  recent 
national  convention  has  refused  to  go  on  record 
against  marked  activity  in  no-license  cam- 
paigns of  its  General  Treasurer,  Mr.  John  B. 
Lennon. 

12.     Organized   labor   is   a   chief  influence  for 
international   peace. 

Its  adherents  are  everywhere  well  aware 
that  the  intolerable  burdens  of  war  and  arma- 
ment fall  chiefly  upon  the  working  classes.  An 
English  authority  reports  that  "in  Europe  the 
general  hope  for  peace  is  centered  in  the  work 
done  by  labor  organizations,"  adding,  "we 
hope  that  as  soon  as  these  organizations 
achieve  their  efficiency,  they  will  organize  them- 
selves    into     international    bodies     to     prevent 


war 


„  "3 


And  hardly  less  than  prophetic  is 
Kcir  Hardie's  prediction  of  "the  time  when 
an  organized  working  class  would  take  its 
place  in  the  politics  of  the  world  by  declaring 
that  on  the  day  on  which  a  war  'vvas  declared 
tools     would     be     dropped     and     every     wheel 

31  Harold    Gorst,   quoted    in    "The    Christian    Ministry 
and  the  Social  Order,"  p.  293. 


CHURCH-MEN  SHOULD  KNOW     (59 

stopped     in     every     country     affected    by     the 
war."32 

13.      Unionism  is  to  be  credited  with  some  re- 
ligious spirit. 

As  it  raises  the  standard  of  living,  it  sets 
men  free  from  bondage  to  material  things 
and  so  makes  possible  for  them  the  things  of 
the  spirit.  Labor,  although  estranged  from 
the  Church,  is  yet  manifestly  responsive  to 
fraternal  overtures  from  the  Church.  Best  of 
all,  workingmen  everywhere  revere  the  name 
and  the  lordship  of  Jesus. 

Surely  organized  labor  has  a  long  and  hon- 
orable record  of  service  rendered  to  the  gen- 
eral welfare  of  mankind.  By  essential  facts 
and  forces  such  as  these,  not  by  questionable 
or  even  deplorable  incidents,  must  Christian 
men  appraise  the  labor  movement  and  pro- 
nounce it  a  prime  factor  in  progressive  civiliza- 
tion. 

32  See  "The  Outlook,"  February  11,  1911,  p.  325. 


VII 

WHAT  WAGE-EARNERS  SHOULD  KNOW 
ABOUT  THE   CHURCH 

"How  can  I  hate  him?  I  know  him,"  said 
Charles  Lamb.  Better  acquaintance  is  the 
way  to  g-ood  will.  When  church-men  get  bet- 
ter acquainted  with  the  labor  unions,  and  labor- 
ing-men with  the  churches,  mutual  esteem  and 
fraternal  co-operation,  to  the  benefit  of  both, 
will  ensue.  And  in  the  long  run  a  benefit 
greater  still  will  accrue   to  society   at  large. 

What  churchmen  should  know  about  the  la- 
bor unions,  was  the  subject  of  the  preceding 
chapter.  It  is  now  in  order  to  consider, 
What  laboring-men  ought  to  know  about  the 
Church.  If  the  reader  is  a  laboring  man,  he 
is  challenged  to  give  the  Church  a  square  deal. 
If  he  is  a  churchman,  he  is  charged  to  present 
the  claims  of  the  Church  to  laboring  men  and 
their  unions  whenever  a  hearing  can  be  ob- 
tained. 

1.  The  church  has  created  the  moral  senti- 
vient  to  which  labor  appeals  and  by 
which  social  service  subsists. 

Jt  is  true  that  nearly   all  the  gains  of  the 


WAGE-EARNERS  SHOULD  KNOW     71 

labor  movement  have  been  made  on  demand  of 
the  labor  unions  rather  than  of  the  churches.  It 
is  equally  true  that  such  demands  would  never 
have  been  accorded,  nor  even  heard,  apart 
from  the  social  conscience  which  the  churches 
have  created.  The  unions  have  been  able  to 
do  for  the  masses  in  America  what  could  not 
have  been  done  in  any  heathen  counti*y  simply 
because  we  have  churches  in  America.  In  tlie 
pre-Christian  world  the  highest  social  thought 
was  attained  by  Plato  and  Aristotle.  Here 
is  Plato's  best  word  concerning  labor:  "Na- 
ture has  made  neither  bootmakers  nor  black- 
smiths ;  such  occupations  degrade  the  people 
engaged  in  them,  miserable  mercenaries  ex- 
cluded by  their  very  position  from  political 
rights."  And  here  is  Aristotle's :  "In  the  state 
which  is  best  governed  the  citizens  must  not 
lead  the  life  of  mechanics  or  tradesmen,  for 
such  a  life  is  ignoble  and  inimical  to  vir- 
tue." ^  The  difference  between  the  world  of 
that  and  the  world  of  this  day  simply  registers 
the  fact  that  in  the  meantime  the  Church  has 
had  its  word  to  say.  As  Professor  Ely  writes : 
"Apart  from  Christ  the  natural  tendency  is 
to  come  back  to  the  standpoint  of  the  Greeks 
and  despise  the  masses."  ^  And  Professor 
Ross  says:  "What  keeps  tlie  Churcli  most  alive 

1  See  G.  Hodges:  "Faith  and  Social  Service,"  p.  58. 

2  See  G.  L.  Bolen:  "Getting  a  Living,"  p.  G18. 


72     WAGE-EARNERS  SHOULD  KNOW 

is  Its  power  to  fit  human  beings  for  harmonious 
social  life.  It  is,  in  the  last  analysis,  the  re- 
pository of  certain  related  ideas,  convictions, 
symbols,  and  appeals  which  have  more  efficacy 
in  socializing  the  human  heart  than  any  other 
group  of  influences  known  to  Western  Civiliza- 
tion." ^  And  Professor  Dewey  says :  "The 
highest  product  of  the  interest  of  man  in  man 
is  the  Church."  ^ 

2.  The  church  through  the  course  of  history 
has  always  been  a  main  factor  in  the 
upUftment  of  the  masses. 

What  is  the  most  democratic  fact  of  history? 
Not  a  primitive  folk-moot  in  a  North  German 
forest,  nor  the  red-handed  Jacquerie  of  France, 
nor  Napoleon  crowned  as  the  people's  Em- 
peror, but  the  fact  that  a  Carpenter  is  wor- 
shiped as  God  by  the  nations  of  the  earth, 
and  this  is  the  achievement  of  the  Church. 
And  the  teaching  of  the  Carpenter,  perpet- 
uated by  the  Church,  is  everywhere  recognized 
as  the  divine  charter  for  the  worth  and  rights 
of  the  common  people. 

The  greatest  single  institution  in  the  inter- 
est of  labor  is  the  weekly  rest  day  "secured  for 
the  toilers  of  Christendom  by  the  very  charter 
of  the  Church  and  defended  on  their  behalf  by 

3  See  "The  Outlook,"  August  28,  1897. 

4  "Psychology,"  p.  343. 


WAGE-EARNERS  SHOULD  KNOW     T.'J 

it  tlirough  the  centuries," — tlie  eurlie^t,  mo^t 
enduring,  and  most  beneficent  labor  legisla- 
tion known  to  history.  "The  Sabbath  stoo<l 
for  the  idea  that  man  belonged  to  Clod,  and 
that  the  lowliest  man  should  be  a  man  of  leisure 
on  that  day,  owinf^  his  time  to  nobody  but  (Jml. 
The  Coundl  of  Wessex  (f)91  A.  I).)  le^nslatctl 
that  if  a  slave  was  forced  by  his  master  to 
work  on  the  Sabbath,  he  was  to  be  free.  The 
slave  is  God's  man  on  that  day ;  and  God  warns 
the  mighty  not  to  trespass  on  his  domain."' 

Again  it  is  never  to  be  forgotten  that  the 
great  stream  of  philanthropy,  which  partly 
compensates  the  inequalities  of  society,  has  its 
perennial  source  in  tlic  influence  of  the  Church. 
And  not  only  the  impulse  to  help  the  less 
favored,  but  likewise  the  upward  aspirations 
of  the  less  favored  themselves  have  arisen  from 
the  same  inexhaustible  source.  In  the  words 
of  Graham  Taylor:  "The  Christian  evangel 
has  long  held  the  ideal  overhead  and  the 
dynamic  within  the  heart  which  has  inspired  a 
divine  discontent.  Every  now  and  then  the 
gospel  strikes  the  earth  under  the  feet  of  the 
common  man,  and  he  rises  up  to  be  counted  as 
one."  °  All  great  movements  for  popidar  wel- 
fare arc  typified,  as  to  their  essential  charac- 
ter, bv  such  popular  uprisings  as  those  of  the 

0  H.  L.  N'ash:  "The  Genesis  of  the  SorinI  C/>nsrirnrr.- 
«  See  "The  Social  Application  of  Hilijriori."  pp.  93-91. 


74     WAGE-EARNERS  SHOULD  KNOW 

German  peasantry  in  the  sixteenth  century  and 
of  the  laborers  of  England  following  the  min- 
istry of  John  WyclifFe,  both  of  which  asserted 
the  rights  of  the  masses  in  terms  of  the  gospel 
which  came  to  them  through  the  Church.  To 
reply  that  the  organized  Church  does  not  im- 
mediately and  everywhere  enlist  itself  in  such 
movements,  is  only  to  cite  the  irrelevant  fact 
that  whenever  truth  is  newly  discovered  it  is 
not  discovered  by  everybody  all  at  once ;  there 
must  always  be  seers  and  pioneers.  And  the 
Church  does  infinitely  more  for  the  masses  than 
any  other  institution,  even  should  we  admit 
that  it  does  no  more  than  perpetuate  the 
sources  from  which  alone  the  seers  and  pioneers 
of  humanity  must  ever  renew  their  vision  and 
their  strength. 

The  abolition  of  slavery  was  the  greatest  of 
all  labor  movements.  And  the  common  scoff 
that  the  Church  did  not  abolish  slavery  misses 
its  point.  The  Golden  Rule  abolished  slavery. 
And  the  Church  has  carried  the  Golden  Rule 
down  the  centuries  and  around  the  world.  Ac- 
cording to  an  authority  so  impartial  as  Ben- 
jamin Kidd,  slavery  was  abolished  in  Europe, 
where  formerly  universal,  largely  through  the 
quiet  and  all  but  forgotten  persuasions  of 
priests  and  prelates  in  the  middle  ages.^  And 
Carroll  D.  Wright  attributes  its  final  abolition 

7  See  "Western  Civilization." 


WAGE-EARNERS  SHOULD  KNOW     75 

tliroughout  the  British  Kinpire  to  the  unmis- 
takable influence  of  the  Wesleyan  reviviil.**  It 
is  well-known  that  the  emancipation-crusade 
of  William  Wilborforce  was  the  direct  con- 
sequence of  his  evangelical  conversion." 

3.     Laboring  men  should  take  account  of  the 
social  movement  in  the  Church  to-day. 

Nothing  is  at  present  so  engaging  the  heart 
and  the  hands  of  the  Church.  It  is  too  true 
that  the  Church  has  done  far  less  than  it  ought 
for  the  social  welfare  in  general  and  for  labor 
in  particular;  but  it  is  also  true  that  no  critics 
of  the  Church  are  more  unsparing  in  this  re- 
gard than  those  of  its  own  membership.  And 
the  Church  at  large,  so  far  from  being  hostile, 
or  even  indifferent  to  such  criticism,  welcomes 
and  lays  it  to  heart.  When  an  institution 
regularly  generates  and  responds  to  self- 
criticism  it  manifests  a  prime  qualification  of 
social  fitness  and  survival.  The  response  of 
the  Church  to  social  needs  is  evidenced  in  the 
departments  of  labor  and  social  service  au- 
thorized by  nearly  all  of  the  denominations, 
the  observance  of  Labor  Sunday  and  the  identi- 
fication of  many  ministers  with  the  unions  or 
their  interests,  the  increasing  concern  «)f  the 
churches   for  labor-legislation,   the  official   dec- 

8  See  G.  L.  Bolcn:  "Gettinj?  a  Living,"  p.  6i9. 

»  See  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  Art.  "Willxrforcr." 


76     WAGE-EARNERS  SHOULD  KNOW 

larations  of  the  chief  denominations  committing 
them  to  the  labor  movement,  and  especially  the 
like  declaration  of  the  Federal  Council  of  the 
Churches  and  the  work  of  its  Social  Service 
Commission,  whereby  the  Protestantism  of 
America  is  committed  with  authority  to  a  social 
creed  and  a  social  program.  JBeyond  all  this, 
it  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  larger  part  of 
the  social  work  of  the  Church  is  that  which  its 
members  are  doing  as  individuals  in  pursuance 
of  its  teachings.  The  help  which  the  Church 
renders  the  cause  of  labor  is  not  measured  by 
the  visible  activity  of  its  organization  or 
officials,  but  by  the  degree  in  which  all  who  ren- 
der any  service  are  actuated  by  the  Christian 
spirit  and  motives  which  the  Church  inculcates. 
When  laboring  men  complain  that  our  reso- 
lutions and  sermons  are  "mere  talk"  and  that 
the  churches  ought  to  "do  something,"  their 
complaint  is  a  mingling  of  wisdom  with  unwis- 
dom. We  may  properly  require  them  to  ob- 
serve that  "talk"  in  the  sense  of  instruction, 
reproof  and  persuasion,  is  not  to  be  disparaged ; 
that  in  this  sense  it  is  at  once  the  chief  func- 
tion of  the  Church  and  a  chief  force  in  all 
human  affairs,  in  labor  unions  for  instance ; 
that  the  right  kind  of  "talking"  is  "doing." 
Again  they  should  consider  that  the  Church 
must  never  do  more  than  persuade  men ;  that 
its  attempt  to  coerce  men  has  been  its  greatest 


WAGE-EARNERS  SHOULD  KNOW     77 

liistoric  error.  Yet  we  cannot  tliiiuiiid  ili.it 
such  critics  be  entirely  sntisfiinl  with  I  lie 
Cliurch.  Our  prejicliiiifrs  and  n-solutitins,  our 
te.u-liin<;-s  and  testimony,  oii^lit  to  he  more 
tiniel}',  more  practical,  more  human,  more  pro- 
phetic. As  organizations  the  churches  ou^ht 
to  ""talk,"  not  less  but  better,  and  also  "do" 
many  more  things  than  now.  But  wjien  all  is 
said  and  done,  the  talking  will  have  led  to  the 
doing. 

Jf.  Loboriug  men  .should  not  utidcr-cstimoti' 
the  democratic  constifueinij  and  spirit 
of  the  church. 

The  Church  is  still  essentially  the  ("Inirch  of 
the  people.  I  speak  of  the  rule,  not  the  ex- 
ception. There  are  exceptions, — a  few  city 
churches  which  arc  conspicuous  because  ex- 
ceptional, and  exceptional  because  so  few  in 
comparison  to  the  tens  of  thousands  of  humble 
churches  composed  of  humble  people. 

It  is  true  that  the  operations  of  the  Church 
are  so  extended  and  complicated  as  to  recjuire 
business  ability  of  the  highest  order  and 
financial  resources  in  large  amounts.  Never- 
theless the  attempts  of  "big  business"  and 
"big  money"  to  take  advantage  of  these  re- 
quirements arc  apparently  infrecjuent  and  in 
certain  instances  the  re[)udiation  of  such  at- 
tempts   has    betn    sliarj)    and    conclusjvi'.      The 


78     WAGE-EARNERS  SHOULD  KNOW 

great  business  enterprises  of  the  churches  are 
largely  conducted  by  men  who  have  come  from 
humble  stations  in  life  and  are  now  rendering 
great  services  at  small  salaries.  And  the  ex- 
penses are  paid,  not  chiefly  by  the  few  large 
gifts  of  the  rich,  but  by  the  many  small  gifts 
of  the  poor.  Nor  are  all  the  great  churches  in 
great  cities  dominated  by  "predatory  wealth." 
Among  the  most  eminent  champions  of  labor 
and  of  social  reform  are  some  of  the  distin- 
guished city  pastors  of  every  denomination. 

5.  Laborers  should  recognize  the  free  minis- 
tration  and  open  fellowship  of  the 
churches. 

In  an  earlier  chapter  it  was  frankly  ac- 
knowledged that  snobbery  is  the  manifest  sin 
of  some  churches.  Nevertheless  I  know  of 
more  than  a  few  churches  where  this  suspicion 
is  due  to  misunderstanding  entirely.  Let 
laborers  who  demand  justice  for  themselves  be 
sure  to  accord  it  to  the  Church. 

It  ought  to  be  more  generally  recognized 
that  the  Church  is  the  one  great  social  institu- 
tion sustained  at  great  expense  by  voluntary 
gifts  and  offering  its  ministrations  without 
charge  to  all  the  people.  Furthermore,  "un- 
like the  fraternal  orders,  with  which  it  is  un- 
favorably compared,  the  Church  welcomes  all 
grades    of    people,    not    having    the   black-ball 


WAGE-EARNERS  SHOUT.D  KNOW     70 

method  of  restrictlnf^  ineniluTsliip."  'I'luTi- 
forc  cliurc'li-iiu'U  iiiav  ri<rlitly  addri-ss  wii^e- 
canicrs  in  this  wise:  The  Church  needs  vou. 
You  need  the  Church.  Meantime  if  you  arc 
not  entirely  pleased  witli  the  Church,  rememher 
that  the  Church  isn't  entirely  ])leased  with  it- 
self. Don't  grumble,  but  lend  a  hand.  'I'here 
are  enough  of  you  to  make  tlie  Church  what- 
ever 3'ou  want  it  to  be,  and  you  can  take  pos- 
session any  day  you  please.  The  door  to 
membership  is  open, — why  not  all  come  in  at 
once, — in  the  fear  of  God,  seeking  pardon  for 
sin,  justice  for  society,  fellowshij)  with  liiim.in- 
ity?     What  a  vision! 


VIII 

THE  SOCIAL  CREED  OF  THE  CHURCH 

In  1908  the  Federal  Council  of  the  Churches 
of  Christ,  officially  representing  thirty-three  de- 
nominations of  American  Protestantism,  promul- 
gated a  declaration  which  has  been  generally 
received  as  "the  social  creed  of  the  Church." 
It  should  be  distinctly  recognized  that  this 
august  body  was  commissioned  with  authority 
competent  to  commit  to  its  utterances  the  par- 
ticipating denominations  collectively.  But 
further,  the  same  denominations,  by  their  own 
official  utterances,  have  committed  themselves 
severally  to  the  same  principles.  For  the  his- 
toric declaration  of  the  Federal  Council  was 
preceded  by  an  almost  identical  utterance  of 
the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church  and  was  fol- 
lowed by  equivalent  utterances  on  the  part  of 
nearly  all  the  Protestant  denominations. 
With  a  view  to  defining  the  position  of  the 
Church  as  to  the  labor  movement,  I  will  now 
quote  in  order,  commenting  on  each,  the  social 
principles  for  which,  by  their  own  avowal,  "the 
churches  must  stand." 

1.     "For  equal  rights  and  complete  justice  for 
all  men  in  all  stations  of  life." 
80 


SOCIAL  CREED  OF  THE  CIirHCII     SI 

Hore  is  a  two-fold  (Ninaiul.  iiaiuciv,  for 
riiualitv  ami  for  justici-,  each  in  the  (■!l^i^fiaIl 
scnsi'.  WJU'M  Christ  taii,-,r|it  all  nun,  \\itlioMt 
rospi'ct  of  ])rr>()n,  to  say  "Our  l-'atlu-r."  He 
put  thcni  on  an  equal  level  of  worth  in  relation 
to  God.  So  far  as  human  relations  put  nu>n 
on  unequal  levels  of  worth,  the  social  system 
becomes  unchristian  and  ungodly.  "Equal 
rights  for  all  men  in  all  stations  of  life"  means 
equality  of  opportunity,  not  w]uality  of  pos- 
sessions, and  universality  of  rif^hts,  not  uni- 
formity of  station.  Not  the  equal  capacities 
of  all  men,  but  the  equal  rii^ht  of  all  to  make 
the  most  of  their  unequal  capacities,  is  as- 
serted. Hence  all  economic  comi)inations  and 
all  social  conditions  which  limit  the  oppor- 
tunity of  any  man  or  hinder  him  from  realiz- 
ing any  of  the  proper  ends  of  his  bcinp,  arc 
contrary  to  the  spirit  of  Jesus  and  the  law  of 
His  kingdom.  And  social  justice,  no  less  than 
private  morality,  must  be  the  uncompromising 
demand  of  the  Church  if  it  is  to  be  worthy  of 
its   Master's   name. 

2.  ''For  tJic  r'li^ht  of  nil  men  to  the  oppor- 
tunitij  for  sclf-nutintcnntuc,  a  rii^ht 
ever  to  be  Tciscly  and  stron^h/  safe- 
guarded against  encroachments  of  rt'crif 
kind.  For  the  right  of  xcorhers  to  some 
protection   iigainst    the   futrdships    often 


82     SOCIAL  CREED  OF  THE  CHURCH 

resulting  from  the  snift  crises  of  in- 
dustrial change." 
This  language  seems  fairly  to  commit  the 
Church  to  the  epoch-making  doctrine  of  "the 
right  to  labor."  We  may  not  be  committed  to 
all  the  alleged  implications  of  that  doctrine;  to 
be  committed  to  its  admitted  implications  is 
sufficiently  revolutionary.  The  right  to  labor 
is  necessary  to  the  right  to  live,  and  should  be 
supported,  not  by  barren  permission,  but  by 
adequate  legal  enactments  and  social  institu- 
tions. Whether  or  not  the  means  to  this  end 
arc  now  apparent,  the  end  itself  should  be 
recognized  as  a  moral  imperative  and  the  means 
should  be  diligently  sought  and  employed. 
But  "he  that  will  not  work,  neither  shall  he 
eat."  Voluntary  and  involuntary  idleness  are 
alike  demoralizing.  Their  abolition  should  be 
the  accepted  work  of  all  Christian  nations. 
Against  this  principle  Goldwin  Smith  thus  ar- 
gues :  "Nor  can  the  right  to  employment  be 
asserted  when  no  employment  offers,  in  the 
case  of  an  artisan  any  more  than  in  that  of  a 
lawyer  for  whom  there  are  no  clients,  or  a  phy- 
sician for  whom  there  are  no  patients."  ^  This 
assumes  wrongly  that  the  artisan's  right  to 
employment  means  the  right  to  earn  the  special 
wage-rate  incident  to  his  special  skill  in  his 
trade.  The  right  really  claimed  is  rather  the 
I  "Labour  and  Capital,"  p.  9, 


SOCIAL  CHKEI)  Ol^  Till'  CliriU  11     Sf? 

simple  right  to  a  living  wago,  wliicli  Inlongs 
unconditionally  to  the  artisan  and  the  j)rofrs- 
sional  man  alike  on  the  simple  ground  that  they 
have  a  right  to  live,  and  is  a  very  diffcrfnt  mat- 
ter from  the  exceptional  wage  paid  for  their  ex- 
ceptional ahilities,  which  becomes  their  right 
only  on  conditioti  that  sonuhody  promises  to 
pay  it. 

3.  "For  the  princifxil  of  cone iliat ion  and  ar- 
bitration in  indnstrutl  dissensions.'" 
In  such  dissensions  the  general  public  is  al- 
ways a  party  in  interest,  sometimes  the  chief 
party  in  interest.  The  interests  of  the  im- 
mediate disputants  should  ever  be  amenable  to 
this  larger  social  interest.  Hence  the  public 
should  always  reserve,  and  when  necessary  ex- 
ercise, the  right  to  intervene  in  its  own  behalf, 
especially  when  transportation  or  other  public 
services,  or  such  necessities  of  life  as  fuel  or 
foodstuffs,  are  involved,  and  whenever  pul)- 
lic  peace  and  order  are  menaced.  While 
such  intervention  should  be  primarily  con- 
ciliatory and  persuasive,  yet  in  defense  of 
public  interests  it  should  be  potentially  deci- 
sive on  occasions  of  great  social  emergency, 

4..     "For    the   protection   of   the   rcorher  from 
dangerous   machineri/,   occnpatiomd  dis- 
ease,  injuries  and  viortfdit//." 
An    earlier    chapter    has    been    given    to    thin 


84     SOCIAL  CREED  OF  THE  CHURCH 

subject.  The  following  conclusions  may  be 
here  re-stated.  The  prevention  of  these  evils 
should  be  secured  by  every  available  precau- 
tion and  safeguard.  When  not  preventable, 
they  should  be  regarded  as  incidental  to  the 
economic  progress  of  society,  and  as  such 
should  be  borne,  as  far  as  possible,  by  society 
at  large  rather  than  by  the  wage-earner,  his 
family,  or  his  social  class.  With  a  view  to  pre- 
vention and  compensation  alike,  the  Church  and 
Christian  men  should  earnestly  promote  the  due 
reformation  of  industrial  processes  and  cus- 
toms and  the  enactment  of  effective  legislation 
in  this  regard.  This  course  is  called  for  not 
only  in  justice  to  the  working  class,  but  in  de- 
fense of  the  social  interests  which  now  suffer 
through  the  disintegration  of  family  life,  the 
untimely  labor  of  children  and  women,  the  in- 
capacity and  consequent  pauperism,  and  the 
race  degeneracy,  all  so  largely  due  to  the  need- 
less or  uncompensated  accidents  and  diseases 
of  modern  industry. 

5.     ''^For  the  abolition  of  child-labor^ 

The  sacred  rights  of  childhood  are  the  rights 
to  home,  health,  play  and  education.  Chris- 
tian citizens  are  therefore  called  upon  to  use 
all  influences  for  the  enactment  and  enforce- 
ment of  laws  that  will  prevent  the  emplo3mient 
of  children   at  an  undue  age,  during  excessive 


SOCIAL  CREED  OF  THE  (  III  I{(  II     sr, 

hours  or  under  any  condition  ditrinunt.d  to 
health,  happiness,  cfliciencv  or  character. 
Every  state  should  also  maintain  a  system  of 
free,  compulsory  and  adetiuate  education,  such 
system  bein^  so  co-ordinated  with  the  code 
affectinor  child-labor  that  their  operation  shall 
be  nnitually  supplementai-y  and  toilet lur  se- 
cure childhood  from  ignorance  on  the  one  hand 
and  habitual  idleness  on  the  other.  Thus  tiic 
interests  of  childhood,  of  labor,  of  the  commoi. 
wealth  and  of  posterity  will  be  alike  conserved. 

6.  "For  such  regulation  of  the  couilition  of 
labor  for  women  as  shall  safecjuard  the 
Ijhysical  and  moral  he(dth  of  the  com- 
muniti/." 

The  Supreme  Court  of  the  T'nited  States  has 
lately  declared  that  such  regulation  should  be 
"imposed  not  solely  for  her  benefit  but  also 
largely  for  the  benefit  of  all."  The  health, 
culture  and  character  of  woman,  involving  lur 
qualification  for  good  motherhood,  whether 
physical,  mental  or  moral,  are  possibly  the  most 
valuable  assets  of  the  human  race.  The  in- 
dustrial employment  of  women  should  be 
limited  in  respect  to  the  number  of  working 
hours  per  day  and  the  number  of  working  days 
per  month,  and  in  all  respects  necessary  to  jiro- 
tect  the  woman-worker  and  the  social  interests 
involved   in  her  welfare. 


86     SOCIAL  CREED  OF  THE  CHURCH 

7.  ^'For  the  suppression  of  the  sweating  sys- 

tem." 

Fiecc-work  in  the  tenement  is  the  prolific 
source  of  the  miseries,  diseases  and  vices  of  the 
city  poor.  Low  wages,  long  hours,  child-labor, 
abnormal  thirst,  foul  air,  organic  and  inor- 
ganic filth,  under-feeding,  over-crowding,  the 
breeding  and  broad-casting  of  tuberculosis, 
scarlet  fever  and  all  manner  of  germ-diseases ; 
the  break-up  of  the  family  and  the  out-break 
of  anarchy,  are  some  of  the  by-products  of  the 
sweating  system.  The  Church  ought  to  be  the 
eager  rival  of  the  labor-union  in  reaching  and 
removing  this  crime  against  civilization. 

8.  "For    the   gradual    and   reasonable   reduc- 

tion of  the  hours  of  labor  to  the  lowest 
practical  point,  and  for  that  degree  of 
leisure  for  all  which  is  the  condition  of 
the  highest  hitman  life." 

The  reasonable  reduction  of  labor-time  is  not 
to  be  regarded  as  a  concession  to  indolence  but 
as  a  contribution  to  the  health,  culture  and 
domestic  integrity  of  the  masses.  The  self-re- 
spect of  civilized  communities  demands  the  uni- 
versal abolition  of  the  twelve-hour  day  except 
under  pressure  of  unavoidable  emergency. 
Every  successful  reduction  of  the  labor-day, 
iv'hen  not  accompanied  by  a  reduction  of  wages 


SOCIAL  CREED  OF  TIIi:  (  IHKc  II     ST 

or    of    product,    is    to    he    vitwiii    as    ii    social 
gain. 

9.  "Fo/-  the  r(-h'(isr  from  cmplojimi-tit  oiu-  ditif 

in  cvrtr/i." 

Tills  (Icinaiul  is  sanctioned  by  physical, 
economic  and  divine  laws.  The  Social  Service 
Commission  of  the  Federated  Churches  has  since 
defined  the  practical  application  of  this  doc- 
trine as  follows:  "(a)  One  day  of  rest  for 
every  six  days  of  work  ;  (b)  This  day  of  rest, 
wherever  possible,  to  be  made  the  Lord's  Day  ; 
(c)  The  pay  of  every  worker  for  six  days  of 
work  to  be  made  sufficient  for  the  needs  of 
seven  days  of  living." 

10.  "For    a    liviiig-icage    as    a     ininiminn    in 

ei'erij  indusfri/." 

The  living  wage  cannot  be  defined  in  termi 
of  money.  Nevertheless  it  is  a  definite  de- 
mand. It  is  such  a  wage-rate  as  will  maintain 
in  life  and  health  a  family  of  average  niiinber, 
affording  elementary  education  to  the  children 
and  due  provision  for  sickness  and  old  age,  and 
not  requiring  wage-labor  on  the  part  of  the 
wife  and  mother,  nor  of  young  children.  The 
social  and  moral  value  of  a  living-wage  will  be 
manifest  in  betterment  of  family  life,  sexual 
morality,  public  health,  industrial  efficiency, 
general  culture  and  good  citi/enshi]). 


88     SOCIAL  CREED  OF  THE  CHURCH 

11.  "For  the  highest  wage  that  each  industry 

can  afford  and  for  the  most  equitable 
division  of  products  of  industry  that 
can  ultimately  he  devised.'^ 

The  common  product  should  be  distributed 
according  to  the  following  principles:  (1)  No 
man  should  receive  less  than  a  living  wage. 
(2)  No  man  should  receive  more  than  he  pro- 
duces or  more  than  a  fair  equivalent  for  a  ser- 
vice rendered.  (3)  The  general  increase  of 
wealth  should  be  accompanied  by  a  proportion- 
ate increase  of  wages.  In  a  Christian  society 
the  actual  distribution  of  wealth  should  be  con- 
stantly challenged  by,  and  as  far  as  possible 
governed  by,  these  conditions.  To  this  end  in- 
dustry and  commerce  must  morally  and  legally 
be  purged  of  monopoly,  exploitation  and 
special  privilege. 

12.  "For  suitable  provision  for  the  old  age 

of  the  workers  and  for  those  incapacit- 
ated by  injury." 

Old  age  in  almshouse  corners  flung  is  a  re- 
proach to  civilization.  In  years  of  strength  a 
man  has  but  the  right  to  make  a  living,  but  in 
old  age  he  has  a  right  to  a  living.  "Suitable 
provision  for  old  age"  must  be  accorded  to  men, 
not  as  charity,  but  justice.  This  is  now  more 
than  the  testimony  of  the  Church  or  the  clamor 
of   the    radical ;   it   is   the   enacted   law   of  the 


SOCIAL  CREED  OF  TlIK  (  IIlHi  II     S!) 

world's  mifrhtiest  oinpire.  And  "suitaMi-  pro- 
vision for  those  incapacitated  by  injury"  is  no 
longer  to  be  contin<i;eiit  on  flic  deni<)nstral)lc 
negligence  of  employers  and  liniited  by  the 
costs  and  uncertainties  of  litigation,  but  is  to 
be  automatic  and  assured,  presumptively  evi- 
denced by  the  mere  fact  of  the  injury,  and  ac- 
corded not  as  a  gratuity  but  as  a  right.  Since 
this  testimony  of  the  Church  was  delivered,  and 
we  trust  in  some  measure  on  account  of  it, 
eleven  American  states  have  embodied  its  prin- 
ciple in  statute  law  and  it  is  probable  that 
practically  all  w\]\  do  so  in  the  early  future. 

13.      ''For  the  ahntcmcut  of  pox^frtij" 

When  Henry  George  declared  that  poverty 
could  and  must  be  abolished  there  were  few  to 
treat  him  seriously.  To-day  the  charity  ex- 
perts and  the  sociologists  are  all  but  unani- 
mous in  the  deliberate  judgment  that  involun- 
tary poverty  is  a  preventable  evil.  The  faith 
of  the  churches  should  be  no  less.  True  it  is 
said,  "the  poor  ye  have  always,"  but  not, 
*'ought  to  havi."  And  it  is  also  said,  "Seek  ye 
first  the  kingdom  and  all  these  things,  (life's 
material  conditions),  shall  be  added  unto  you." 
And  that  promise  will  yet  be  literally  fulfilled 
when  we  seek  the  kingdom  socially  as  well  as 
individually. 

The   supreme   act   of  Cliristian    faifh    in    our 


90     SOCIAL  CREED  OF  THE  CHURCH 

generation  is  the  belief  that  the  industrial 
world  can  indeed  be  Christianized  and  the  reso- 
lution that  it  shall  be  done.  That  such  a  faith 
can  be  held  and  make  headway  amid  the  reg- 
nant selfishness,  injustice  and  cruelty  of  the 
times  is  no  less  than  the  modern  manifestation 
of  the  mind  of  Christ  and  the  unfading 
splendor  of  the  Apocalypse.  May  the  men  of 
Christ's  Church  be  not  disobedient  unto  the 
heavenly  vision ! 


IX 
SOCIALISM 

Tlic  most  sigiiifii'niit  outgrowth  of  tlu"  mod- 
ern labor  movement  is  Sociulisin.  In  its  fun- 
damental criticism  of  the  present  social  order, 
in  its  exalted  vision  of  the  future  social  order, 
and  in  its  living  faith  in  that  vision,  Socialism 
ranks  next  to  Christianity  itself  among  the 
idealisms  of  history.  No  study  could  be  more 
timely,  whether  for  Socialist,  Labor-unionist 
or  Christian,  than  the  study  of  Socialism  in  its 
relations  with  the  lul)or  movfiiKiit  and  Chris- 
tianity. 

1.     SOCIALISM  ITSELF 

In  these  days  one  is  likely  to  be  bluntly 
asked,  "Do  you  believe  in  Socialism?"  The  an- 
swer is  at  once  as  difficult  and  as  easy  as  though 
the  question  had  been,  "Do  you  believe  in  re- 
ligion?" For  just  as  religion  may  mean  any- 
thing from  fetichism  to  "the  mind  that  was 
in  Christ  Jesus,"  so  Socialism  may  mean  any- 
thing from  "the  red  fool-fury  of  the  Seine"  to 
the  Holy  City  of  the  Apocalypse.  The  many 
and  varied  Socialisms  may  l)o  classiHrd  under 
four  tvpes.  Fir»t,  Idral  Socialism,  which  may 
91 


92  SOCIALISM 

mean  merely  the  general  prevalence  of  the  so- 
cial spirit — of  fraternity  and  service.  Second, 
Cooperative  Socialism,  which  seeks  all  ways  to 
replace  competition  with  cooperation  through- 
out the  economic  realm, ^  Third,  Evolutionary 
Socialism,  which  proposes  the  gradual  and  ex- 
perimental extension  of  state-action,  with  the 
complete  cooperative  commonwealth  as  the  fixed 
but  remote  ideal.  Fourth,  Revolutionary  So- 
cialism, which  proposes  the  immediate  estab- 
lishment of  the  cooperative  commonwealth  as 
a  substitute  for  our  entire  system  of  competi- 
tive industry  and  private  ownership  of  land 
and  large  capital.  Revolutionary  Socialism  is 
not  necessarily  a  program  of  disorder  and  dy- 
namite; its  representative  programs  are 
strictly  political  and  pacific. 

Whether  certain  of  these  four  types  are  en- 
titled to  the,  name  of  Socialism  is  sometimes 
denied  both  by  adherents  and  opponents,  and 
3^et  all  these  types  have  been  so  named  and 
have  so  named  themselves.  To  avoid  confu- 
sion, the  present  discussion  will  be  confined  to 
the  third,  the  evolutionary  t3'pe,  and  without 
further  explanation  it  may  be  assumed  that 
the  word  "Socialism"  will  be  here  used  with 
that  reference.  In  this  sense  it  is  well  defined 
by  the  late  Edmond  Kelley  as  "the  theory  that 
the    production,    transportation,    and    distribu- 

iSee  T.  Kirkup:  "History  of  Socialism,"  pp.  400-402. 


SOCIALISM  93 

tion  of  the  necessities  of  life  can  to  a  certuin 
extent  to-day,  slowly  to  a  larger  defrroe,  and 
perhaps  eventually  altogether,  lie  best  under- 
taken by  the  collective  action  of  the  city  or 
state  through  the  substitution  of  cooperation 
for  competition,  and  social  for  self-interest."  - 
Thus  we  eliminate  from  the  present  discussion 
many  points  of  controversy.  In  this  sense,  for 
instance,  Socialism  is  not  artificial  nor  "con- 
trary to  nature,"  but,  as  trul}'  as  Individualism, 
is  an  original  factor  in  nature,  as  seen  in  the 
"collectivism"  of  the  ant-hill  and  the  bee-hive.^ 
Nor  is  such  Socialism  altogether  visionary  and 
untried.  It  is  even  now  the  operative  principle 
of  the  family,  the  school  and  the  church,  and 
even  in  the  political  state  is  exemplified  by  our 
highways,  parks,  water-works,  postal-system, 
and  all  those  colossal  properties  involved  in  the 
present  conservation  problem.  It  was  general 
in  primitive  society  and  generic  in  priinitivt" 
Christianity.^ 

Nor  does  Socialism  propose  altogether  to 
abolish  private  property.  Goods  for  consump- 
tion would,  of  course,  remain  the  private  prop- 
erty of  the  consumers.  Goods  for  production, 
(that   is,   capital),   might    be   either   private   or 

2  "Individualism  and  Collectivism,"  p.  4. 
3Cf.    E.    Kclit-y:  Op.  cit.,   p.  4-. 

*  See  W.  HaiisclMMihiiscli:  ''('hrislianity  and  the  Sotiul 
Crisis,"   pp.  388-39:}  and  4i;i-Hi. 


94.  SOCIALISM 

common  propertj-,  according  to  whether  they 
are  for  private  use  or  for  common  use.  That 
is,  the  carpenter's  saw  or  the  artist's  pencil 
might  be  private  property',  but  a  railroad  or 
a  factory  would  be  public  property.  Reason- 
able Socialists  would  probably  say  that  a  man 
might  properly  own  any  kind  of  property  ex- 
cept such  as  gives  him  control  over  other 
men's  living;  property  of  the  latter  kind 
should  be  owned  by  all  men  in  common.  In  a 
word,  the  choice  is  not  between  Individualism 
and  Socialism  as  mutually  exclusive,  but  just  as 
Individualism  now  is  largely  socialistic,  so 
would  Socialism  then  be  largely  individualistic. 
Socialism  also  disclaims  any  menace  to  the 
individuality  of  personal  character.  It  is  true 
indeed  that  in  the  lower  industrial  processes 
which  satisfy  those  physical  needs  in  which  in- 
dividuals are  nearest  alike,  work  would  then  be 
done  by  routine  and  the  workers  would  be 
regimented.  But  this  kind  of  work,  accord- 
ing to  the  socialistic  exposition,  would  thus  be 
reduced  to  the  minimum,  and  this  done,  all  the 
workers  would  still  have  abundant  time  and 
vitality  for  those  higher  pursuits  in  which  men 
exercise  their  choices  and  develop  their  indi- 
vidualities. Says  John  A.  Hobson :  "In  a  word, 
the  highest  diAasion  of  labor  has  not  yet  been 
attained, — that  which  will  apportion  machin- 
ery   to    the    collective    supply    of    the    routine 


SOCIALISM  o.-; 

needs  of  life,  and  art  to  the  individual  siij)})Iy 
of  the  individual  needs.  In  this  way  alone  can 
society  obtain  the  full  use  of  the  labor-saving 
character  of  machinery,  niininii/ing  the  amount 
of  human  exertion  engafrcd  in  tendinf^  machin- 
ery and  maximizing  the  amount  enfjaged  in 
the  free  and  interesting  occupations."  ''  Thus 
Socialism  proposes  that  individuality  shall 
have  for  its  security,  no  lonfijer  the  "special 
privilege"  of  the  few,  but  "equality  of  oppor- 
tunity" for  everyone. 

2.     SOCIALISM    AXD   THE   LABOR    MOVEMP^NT 

In  its  fundamental  character  the  labor  move- 
ment is  more  than  a  strife  for  higher  pay  and 
shorter  hours.  It  is  the  progress  of  industrial 
dcmocrac}',  and  its  consummation  will  come 
when  the  economic  order,  as  well  as  the  political 
government,  shall  be  "of  the  people,  for  the 
people,  and  by  the  people."  Inasmuch  as 
trade-unionism  is  a  fighting  force  for  obtain- 
ing specific  economic  gains  to  labor,  it  can 
never  be  adequate  to  the  fulfillment  of  the  labor 
movement  in  its  higher  ideals  of  universal 
democracy,  justice,  fraternity  and  peace. 
Socialism  is  the  collective  name  for  these  ideals. 

Socialists  maintain  that  the  laboring-class, 
no  matter  how  well  "unionized,"  is  always  at 
a    disadvantage    in    its    present    st niggle    with 

5  "The    Evolution    of   Modern   Cnpitalisni." 


96  SOCIALISM 

Ccapital.  Hunger  forever  fights  against  the 
class  that  lives  by  its  labor  only,  and  for  the 
class  that  lives  by  capital ;  for  capital  is  but 
another  name  for  the  opportunity  to  labor  and 
live.  Hence,  "Whatever  terms  organized 
labor  may  succeed  in  winning  are  always  tem- 
porary and  insecure,  like  the  hold  which  a 
wrestler  gets  on  the  body  of  his  antagonist. 
Moreover  ...  it  has  to  wrestle  on  its 
knees  with  a  foeman  who  is  on  his  feet."  ^ 
Socialism  proposes  that  no  class  nor  man  shall 
hold  such  an  advantage  over  others,  but  that 
social  capital  shall  be  held  in  common  for  the 
common  good. 

Socialists  maintain,  again,  that  trade-union- 
ism is  inadequate  because  it  implies  the  con- 
tinued division  of  society  into  hostile  classes, — 
capitalists  and  wage-workers.  As  a  war-meas- 
ure unionism  serves  the  higher  ends  of  the 
labor  movement  in  the  same  imperfect  wa}'  that 
an  efficient  army  serves  the  true  welfare  of  a 
nation.  Hence  Socialism  proposes  that  all 
laborers  become  also  capitalists,  and  all 
capitalists  become  laborers,  and  so  that  the  in- 
dustrial war  shall  end  in  the  fusion  of  the  war- 
ring classes. 

Socialists  further  maintain  that  unionism  is 
no  remedy  for  monopoly.  The  tendency  to 
monopoly  is  one  of  the  most  ominous  phe- 
6  W.  Rauschenbusch:  Op.  cit.,  p.  407. 


SOCIALISM  97 

nomena  of  the  time  and  the  power  thus  de- 
veloped is  prohnbly  tlie  f^reutest  power  ever 
exerted  by  men  over  their  fellownnen.  Were 
this  power  to  be  transferred  from  the  directors 
of  some  great  corporation  to  the  executive  com- 
mittee of  some  groat  hibor  union,  or  to  be  lield 
jointly  by  both,  the  interests  of  society  would 
be  no  more  secure  than  at  present;  on  the  lat- 
ter supposition  probably  less  so,  since  the  most 
powerful  monopolies  even  now  seem  to  be  those 
in  which  there  is  apparent  collusion  between 
the  monopolistic  management  and  its  unionized 
employees."  Hence  Socialism  proposes  that 
the  whole  public  be  admitted  into  the  combina- 
tion ;  in  other  words  that  society  become  its 
own  monopolist. 

To  set  labor  free  from  the  advantages  of 
capital  in  our  present  industrial  war,  to  end 
the  industrial  war  itself,  to  provide  that 
monopoly  shall  accrue  to  the  public  good  in- 
stead of  private  gain, — to  achieve  these  ends 
would  at  once  fulfill  the  labor  movement  and 
inaugurate  the  socialistic  state. 

3.     SOCIALISM  AND  CHRISTIANI'n' 

Whatever  disagreement  may  be  asserted  be- 
tween Socialism  and  Christianity,  it  cnn  hardly 
be  denied  that  they  agree  in  their  motive  and 
in    their    aim.       For    the    conniion    motive    of 

7Cf.  J.  A.  Hobson:  "Tho  Evolution  of  .Mcxl.rn 
Capitalism,"  p.  358. 


98  SOCIALISM 

Christianity  and  Socialism  is  conscientious  con- 
cern for  the  Injustices  and  cruelties  of  the  pres- 
ent social  order.  And  the  common  aim  of 
Christianity  and  Socialism  is  the  perfection  of 
the  social  order. 

With  agreement  as  to  motive  and  aim,  the 
only  possible  disagreements  would  be  as  to 
methods.  Many  Socialists  there  are  who  pro- 
fess to  repudiate  with  hatred  and  scorn,  not  only 
certain!  sects,  creeds  and  dogmas,  but  Chris- 
tianity itself.  Many  Christians  there  are  who 
profess  to  repudiate  with  equal  hatred  and 
scorn,  not  only  certain  socialistic  programs, 
platforms  and  propositions,  but  Socialism  it- 
self. An  increasing  number,  among  Socialists 
and  Christians  alike,  are  moved  by  the  convic- 
tion that  socialistic  schemes,  apart  from  the 
di^^ne  vitality  of  Christianity,  will  be  ever  Inert 
and  sterile,  while  Christian  principles,  apart 
from  their  application  to  the  human  realities 
of  society,  are  perverted  from  their  divine  pur- 
pose. Hence,  the  demand  that.  In  addition  to 
the  common  motive  and  common  aim  of 
Socialism  and  Christianity,  we  now  find  such 
common  methods  as  shall  make  complete  an 
adequate  and  operative  system  of  Christian 
Socialism. 

To  this  end  it  will  not  be  necessary  for  cither 
party  to  champion  every  theory  or  proposal 
which    may    call'  itself  by   the   name    of   Chris- 


SOCIALISM  99 

tianity  or  the  name  of  Socialism.  But  it  will 
be  necessary  for  all  concerned  to  understand 
one  another  better  than  at  present.  Chris- 
tian men  must  give  unprejudiced  hearing  to 
the  cause  of  the  Socialists  and  nnist  invite  re- 
ciprocal candor  toward  the  cause  of  Christ. 
The  Christian  must  thankfully  honor  the 
Socialist's  noble  faith  that  the  brotherhood  of 
man  can  really  be  made  to  work.  The  Social- 
ist must  thankfully  honor  the  Christian's  faith 
that  the  Fatherhood  of  God  will  make  it  work. 
The  Christian  must  unlearn  his  notion  that  So- 
cialism proposes  nothing  but  social  conflagra- 
tion in  this  world.  The  Socialist  must  unlearn 
his  notion  that  Christianity  proposes  nothing 
but  insurance  against  spiritual  conflagration 
in  the  world  to  come.  Each  must  recognize 
in  the  other  the  witness  of  an  exalted  vision. 
Each  must  recognize  in  the  other's  vision  his 
own  from  another  angle.  And  finally  both 
must  seek  the  ways  of  working  together  in  or- 
der that  their  visions  at  last  may  be  embodied 
in  the  fact  and  substance  of  that  co-operative 
commonwealth  which  will  also  be  the  new 
Jerusalem  out  of  Heaven  from  God. 


X 

WHAT  CHRISTIAN  MEN  SHOULD  DO 

"Christianity  and  the  Labor  Movement"  is 
much  more  than  a  subject  for  thought.  It  is  a 
call  for  action.  As  in  the  sacred  story,  so  it  is 
to-day:  "While  Peter  thought  on  the  vision, 
the  Spirit  said,  Behold,  three  men  seek  thee;" 
after  the  vision,  God's  call  to  human  service. 
And  the  book  that  tells  the  story  is  rightly 
called  the  book  of  Acts.  And  so,  we  now  con- 
clude these  studies  of  the  labor  movement  with 
the  question.  What  to  do?  and  with  the  answer 
in  the  motto  of  the  Wesleyan  Union  for  Social 
Service, — "See  and  Serve." 

First,  Christian  men  must  see.  It  is  no  less 
than  unchristian  for  us  to  act  on  prejudiced 
or  partial  views  of  the  labor  movement.  Chris- 
tian men  should  give  to  its  study  much  of  the 
same  diligent  attention  which'  they  apply  to 
vital  problems  of  their  private  business ;  for 
the  King's  business  cannot  be  less  vital. 

One's  attitude  of  mind  is  the  first  factor  in  a 
true  understanding.  A  distinguished  leader  of 
the  Church-brotherhood  movement  says  with 
too  much  truth  that  "the  average  Church-man 
has  been  inclined  to  view  the  labor  union  merely 
100 


WHAT  CHRISTIANS  SHOULD  DO     101 

as  an  organization  of  malcontents  whoso  par- 
ticular purpose  it  is  to  'run  the  business  of 
the  cmplo3'er,'  to  dechire  strikes,  to  conunit  acts 
of  violence  and  to  demand  higher  wages."  * 
The  Christian  whose  social  environment  is  not 
that  of  the  working-class,  or  he  who  has  had 
some  exasperating  experience  in  dealing  with 
that  class,  will  confess  to  nothing  worse  than 
human  nature  in  frankl}'  recognizing  that  he 
probably  has  prejudices  which  he  ought 
promptly  to  detect  and  dispel.  He  must 
recognize  at  the  least  that  unionism  has  come 
to  stay ;  that  the  present  social  order  makes 
it  inevitable.  He  should  also  recognize  that 
the  way  to  bring  unionism  to  its  highest  pos- 
sibilities of  good  is  to  meet  it  with  respect, 
candor  and  Christian  fraternity.  One  who  is 
a  leader  in  the  church  and  in  the  union  says 
it  is  too  generally  true  that  union-men  have- 
formed  the  habit  of  anticipating  little  else  than 
harsh  and  unintelligent  criticism  from  church- 
men. This,  of  course,  tends  to  react  by  pro- 
voking on  the  part  of  the  unionists  the  very 
perversities  which  have  first  been  imputed  to 
them.  On  the  other  hand,  according  to  a 
familiar  trait  in  all  men,  an  imputed  virtue 
tends  to  become  an  imparted  virtue.  Hence 
Christian    men    by   manifest   good-will   can    do 

1  W.  B.  Patterson:  "Modern  Church  Brotherhoods,"  p. 
220. 


102     WHAT  CHRISTIANS  SHOULD  DO 

much  to  elicit  reciprocal  good-will.  And  good- 
will is  prerequisite  to  a  true  understanding  of 
the  present  social  situation.  To  know  the 
social  problem  we  must  know  the  men  involved, 
and  to  know  them  we  must  first  honor  and  love 
them. 

The  critical  necessity  of  such  an  under- 
standing appears  when  we  consider  that  there 
are  some  sixteen  millions  of  our  citizens,  half 
at  least  being  in  the  churches,  who  must  be 
the  final  arbitrators  of  the  labor  movement,  the 
gravest  responsibility  which  ever  has  been  laid 
upon  public  conscience  and  judgment  in  any 
land.  And  it  is  not  the  unionist  alone  who 
fears  that  church-men  are  not  yet  competent 
to  understand  and  judge  the  labor-movement. 
An  accredited  sociologist  lately  said:  "It  is  a 
question  in  my  mind  whether  those  sixteen 
millions  will  serve  as  impartial  arbitrators. 
In  my  opinion  a  good  many  of  us  who  are  now 
so  solicitous  about  the  rights  of  the  working- 
men  will  scurry  to  cover  as  soon  as  the  real 
demands  of  the  laboring-classes  appear."  ^ 
And  Professor  Earp  adds  the  comment  that  the 
great  task  of  the  Church  to-day  is  so  to  educate 
this  neutral  group  in  righteousness,  peace, 
and  Christian  brotherhood  that  they  will 
be     compelled     to    judge     impartially,     what- 

2  Professor  A.  S.  Johnson  in  "The  Journal  of  Amer- 
ican Sociological  Society,"  1908,  p.  155, 


WHAT  CHRISTIANS  SHOin.I)  1)()     lOJJ 

ever  may  be  the  ultimate  demands  of  hibor.-' 
To  this  end  tlie  accredited  representatives 
of  tlie  labor  movement  should  be  everywhere 
and  frequently  invited  to  address  the  brother- 
hood chapters  of  the  churches.  They  should 
there  be  encouraged  to  set  forth  frankly  and 
fully  the  ideals  and  the  claims  of  the  unions. 
On  such  occasions  they  should  never  be  "bad- 
gered" or  "patronized."  In  many  places  such 
chapters  may  do  well  to  hold  "open  forums"  in 
which,  from  time  to  time,  the  labor  problem 
shall  be  treated  in  its  various  aspects  b^  com- 
petent speakers,  followed  by  a  general  discus- 
sion open  to  any  and  all  who  desire  to  par- 
ticipate,— a  plan  already  well-approved  by  ex- 
perience. Mutual  good-will  has  also  been  pro- 
moted where  church  brotherhoods  have  invited 
particular  unions,  or  all  the  union  officers  in 
a  city,  to  a  supper  followed  by  an  evening  of 
social  enjoyment.  To  these  social  courtesies, 
as  well  as  to  the  invitations  for  public  hear- 
ings, the  unions  have  sometimes  reciprocated  by 
like  invitations  given  to  the  church-men. 
These  courtesies  will,  however,  be  fatally  vi- 
tiated if  they  are  undertaken  only  as  schemes  to 
inveigle  wage-earners  into  church  attendance. 
Workingmen  will  not  fail  to  "see  through" 
such  devices  and  will  discount  them  accord- 
ingly.     The  only  worthy  and  practical  motive 

3  See  "The  Socialized  Cliurch,"  p.  86. 


104     WHAT  CHRISTIANS  SHOULD  DO 

will  be  the  honest  purpose  on  the  part  of 
church-men  to  know  the  laboring-men,  the 
labor-movement  and  the  unions,  face  to  face 
and  heart  to  heart. 

The  men  of  every  church  should  be  organized 
for  systematic  study  and  discussion  of  these 
matters.  In  many  churches  this  can  best  be 
done  under  the  auspices  of  the  brotherhood 
chapter.  Two  lines  of  study  should  be  care- 
fully followed.  First,  the  social  problem  in 
general,  including  special  attention  to  the  labor 
problem.  For  this  purpose  two  or  three  ap- 
proved text-books  should  be  read  by  all,  while 
a  few  good  reference  volumes,  one  or  two  social 
service  periodicals,  at  least  one  high-grade 
labor  journal,  and  the  bulletins  of  the  Social 
Service  Commission  of  the  Federated  Churches, 
should  be  conspicuously  accessible  in  the  read- 
ing-rooms of  the  Church  or  in  the  head-quar- 
ters of  the  chapter.  The  method  of  conduct- 
ing such  study-classes  must  depend  on  the  con- 
ditions of  each  case.  Often  the  men's  class 
in  the  Sunday-school  affords  favorable  op- 
portunities, and  everywhere  such  study  is  prob- 
ably the  most  urgent  matter  with  which  these 
classes  could  be  concerned. 

A  second  study  of  imperative  importance  to 
Christian  men  is  that  of  the  social  and  labor 
conditions  of  their  own  local  community. 
Through   the    social    service   committee    of  the 


WHAT  CHRISTIANS  SHOrLD  DO     lOr, 

local  brotherhood  in  co-operiitioii  with  Ihi- 
united  brotherhoods  of  the  city,  a  careful  luul 
coniprehcnisve  investigation  should  be  made  of 
local  conditions  as  to  wages  and  hours  of  labor, 
Sunday  work,  unemployment,  the  labor  of 
women  and  children,  immigrant  labor,  work- 
accidents,  and  industrial  diseases,  (and  the  re- 
lation of  the  two  latter  items  to  local  poverty 
and  pauperism),  housing  and  sanitation  as 
affecting  the  health  of  the  working-classes,  the 
local  trade  unions  and  their  demands,  local 
socialistic  organizations  and  their  spirit,  strong 
drink  as  a  local  factor  in  the  labor  problem, 
and  not  the  least,  the  attitude  of  the  laboring 
classes  toward  religion  and  the  churches.  The 
aim  of  all  such  investigations  should  be,  not 
merely  to  make  a  "survey,"  but  to  devise  ways 
and  means  for  civic  betterment,  to  make  hap- 
pier and  holier  the  lives  of  all  the  people  in 
town.  It  should  also  be  remarked  that  village 
and  rural  communities  have  their  peculiar  labor 
problems  to  which  churchmen  must  not  be  in- 
different. 

Our  churches,  and  especially  their  "brother- 
hood" chapters,  must  see  to  it  that  tlu-y  are 
uncompromisingly  democratic.  It  is  not 
enough  that  wage-earners  are  permitted  to 
"join"  if  they  care  to  do  so.  They  must  be 
made  to  care.  Their  capacity  for  leadership 
should  be  duly  honored  by  their  fnciuent  dec- 


106     WHAT  CHRISTIANS  SHOULD  DO 

tion  to  the  offices  and  by  careful  solicitude  for 
their  advice  and  co-operation.  The  social 
gatherings  of  the  church,  its  receptions  and 
banquets,  should  never  be  marked  by  such  an 
excess  of  expense  or  "dress"  as  will  be  pro- 
hibitive or  uncomfortable  for  the  working  class 
of  the  congregation.  This  can  surely  be 
avoided  without  going  to  the  other  extreme  of 
making  them  cheap  and  shabby,  which  would 
be  equally  displeasing  to  self-respecting  work- 
ing-people. The  heart  of  the  matter  is  re- 
vealed in  these  words  spoken  by  a  labor  leader 
to  a  company  of  Christian  men :  "The  danger 
in  the  conflict  is  the  bitterness  of  the  class- 
feeling.  Nothing  will  add  so  much  to  this  bit- 
terness as  class  churches." 

Not  only  should  the  workingmen  be  active 
in  the  churches.  Christian  men  should  join 
the  labor-unions  whenever  eligible.  As  a  rule 
it  is  not  the  critical  outsider  but  the  co-opera- 
tive insider  who  helps  any  organization  to 
come  to  its  highest  usefulness.  One  cannot 
praise  too  highly  the  testimony  of  Bishop  Mc- 
Intyre  of  the  Methodist  Church  that  he  glories 
in  his  membership  in  the  union  and  his  advice 
to  the  ministers  to  join  some  union  whenever 
they  can.     Let  laymen  do  likewise. 

Besides  assuming  the  attitude  of  courtesy 
and  good-will  and  seeking  close  acquaintance 
with  the  labor  problem  and  laboring  men,  there 


WHAT  CHRISTIANS  SHOUI.D  DO     107 

remain  many  specific  tasks  wliich  Christian  men 
may  take  up  in  behalf  of  labor  and  in  the  name 
of  Christ.  Brotherhoods,  like  ministerial  as- 
sociations, may  procure  exchange  of  fraternal 
delegates  with  the  unions.  Brotherhood  con- 
ventions may  provide  for  a  "labor-fellowship 
meeting"  to  be  addressed  by  such  men  as  John 
Mitchell  or  John  B.  Lennon.  Church-men  in 
the  unions  should  encourage  those  organiza- 
tions to  appoint  chaplains,  as  some  unions 
have  already  done.  Not  only  should  unions 
in  their  campaigns  for  Sunday-rest  find  every- 
where a  fighting  alliance  with  all  church-men, 
but  church-men  in  this  behalf  ought  more  often 
to  open  the  campaign.  When  well  approved 
social  legislation  is  before  legislative  commit- 
tees the  representatives  of  the  unions  ought  to 
be  able  to  rely  implicitly  on  finding  by  their  side 
at  every  hearing  the  representatives  of  the 
churches.  In  every  demand  for  social  justice, 
whether  made  before  public  authorities,  at  the 
office  of  corporations  or  the  bar  of  public  opin- 
ion, wage-earners  should  be  able  to  count  on 
the  unanimous  and  active  support  of  church- 
men. Of  course  this  involves  "lobbying"  and 
the  like,  and  to  any  of  us  who  are  too  dainty 
for  such  things,  I  would  recommend  the  words 
of  Walter  Rauschenbusch:  "There  are  prob- 
ably few  denominations  which  would  hesitate 
a  moment  to  fling  their  full  force  on  a  legisla- 


108     WHAT  CHRISTIANS  SHOULD  DO 

ture  if  the  tenure  of  their  property  or  the  free- 
dom of  their  church  was  threatened.  If  it  is 
right  to  lobby  in  their  own  behalf,  it  cannot 
well  be  wrong  to  lobby  in  behalf  of  the 
people."  In  most  places  a  great  opportunity 
is  afforded  by  Labor  Sunday  preceding  Labor 
Day  in  September.  The  pastor  of  the  church 
will  usually,  on  such  occasions,  welcome  the 
co-operation  of  the  brotherhood-diapter,  not 
only  because  such  co-operation  re-enforces  him 
in  inviting  the  church  attendance  of  working- 
men,  but  because  it  re-enforces  his  attitude  and 
utterances  as  their  friend. 

All  this  does  not  mean  that  the  Church  or 
church-men  are  to  sanction  every  demand  of 
every  labor  union,  or  in  any  other  way  to  be 
partial  or  partisan.  But  it  does  mean  that 
church-men  are  to  stand  for  social  justice 
everywhere,  all  the  time  and  at  any  cost.  It 
means  that  every  demand  of  labor,  whether  wise 
or  unwise,  shall  be  heard  with  friendliness  and 
judged  without  prejudice.  It  means  that  the 
Church  shall  stand,  not  merely  for  the  charity 
that  alleviates  the  symptoms,  but  for  the  jus- 
tice that  removes  the  causes,  of  our  social  ills. 
It  means  finally  that  Christianity  can,  and 
Christian  men  must,  impart  to  the  social  order 
the  only  ideals  and  motives  which  can  direct 
toward  perfection  the  progress  of  mankind. 

4  "Christianity  and  the  Social  Crisis,"  p.  372-373. 


-  a^L 


(244-' 


iiiiii  I 
iillll 


W' 
mm'Mv: 

ililli 


llliilli 

liii  iiiii 


lii 


II 


p 


